A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

Running time 5hrs 15mins

BBC Radio Collection £13.99

The time is the early 1950s in the fictional town of Brahmpur where, against the backdrop of independent India's first general election, Mrs Rupa Mehra is searching with mounting desperation for a 'suitable boy' to marry her daughter Lata. An Indian social class more English than the English is brilliantly recreated: the Poetry Club meets to debate the topic 'Eliot: whither?'; the ladies play canasta and discuss the best place to obtain Chivers marmalade. And Lata's suitor heads his New Year's resolutions with the intention to finish reading the major novels of Thomas Hardy.

Simmering beneath these niceties, however, are private tragedies, illicit love and political entanglements. Lata's first real love, for a Muslim boy, is forbidden and after painful encounters with mismatched suitors, she finally succumbs to marriage with a man who is wedded more to his shoe-manufacturing business than to her.

Transforming Seth's massive novel into a five-hour dramatisation was an ambitious task for the producer, John Dryden. It was recorded mainly in the faded elegance of the Maharaja of Dhrangadhara's palace in Pune with a 48-strong Indian cast of stunning vitality - and the result is magical. The on-location production adds another dimension, with all those background sounds so characteristic of India: street noise; teasing, high pitched singing - and the cries of parakeets.