All You Who Sleep Tonight

Vikram Seth’s magnificent facility with language, his effortless access to the deepest reservoirs of feeling, and his ability to light up everyday moments are in full display in this collection of poems. He delves into the varieties of love—lost, remembered, and deferred. He speaks of life’s ironies, horrors and regrets in ‘other voices’: the poet Mirza Ghalib; a German commander at Auschwitz; a Japanese doctor in Hiroshima after the bombing. He shows us a mountain dawn in Garhwal; conducts us through Lion Grove in Suzhou, China, and across the Golden Gate Bridge on its fiftieth anniversary. Poignant, witty and wise by turns, and always deeply and bravely human, the poems in these pages are unforgettable.