Bestselling Indian Author Vikram Seth Blows Book Deadline, Asked to Return 1 Million Pound Advance

Posted on July 14, 2013

The Telegraph reports that bestselling Indian author and poet Vikram Seth is in hot water with his publishers. Seth has been asked to return his 1 million pound advance because he's missed the deadline to turn in the manuscript for his next novel, which is a sequel to his 1993 novel, A Suitable Boy.

David Godwin, Seth's agent, tried to play down the news telling the Mumbai Mirror that his client is negotiating a new deadline with his publisher and that the deal is not off just yet. He said, "Vikram has been known to take his time with his books. Our aim is to settle this new date with Hamish [Hamilton]."

Hamish Hamilton, the publisher of the book, is now owned by the conglomerate Penguin Random House. Penguin refused to comment on the case saying that it happened before the merger and it has nothing to do with cost-cutting measures. That's kind of an odd statement because no one had connected Seth's troubles with cost-cutting. Penguin Random House told The Telegraph, "Penguin never comments on individual contract negotiations with out authors...It should be noted that these discussions precede the Penguin Random House merger, and are not at all connected to the merger or erroneous suggestions of cost cutting."

The next novel (if it ever gets published) is to be called A Suitable Girl. It will pick up where the first novel left off. In the first novel, which weighed in at 1300 pages, the heroine Lata searched for a husband in post-independence India. The sequel is supposed to put Lata in modern day India.