Vikram Seth is my favourite writer. I was lucky enough to meet him, and speak with him in September 2000. He is the author of the moving A Suitable Boy and of several poetry collections. You can read a short biography by clicking here. His upcoming novel is Two Lives, "— a memoir built around his great uncle Shanti who married a German Jewish girl, Henny, he befriended while staying with her family in Berlin in the thirties". It should be published in 2005. I can't wait.