6 - In Europe: An Equal Music

Summary

An Equal Music (1999) came out to a reading public that was eagerly awaiting Seth's new novel. It was published six years after A Suitable Boy and its reception was naturally shaped by the enormous popularity and hype surrounding the earlier work, which was described in publishing and literary circles as an international bestseller. A second factor that pushed expectations to dizzying heights was Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet getting published around the same time. In about a month's time both authors had media coverage that most well-established writers enjoy in a lifetime. The Seth-Rushdie controversy originated in a media reported spat between the two soon after the publication of A Suitable Boy, which Seth immediately denied in a letter to the Times (Clark 1999). The hype about their new novels was in a way fuelled by expectant publishers, literary editors, music journalists and even general reporters eager for a story. There were elements enough for speculation and curiosity in the fact that two high-profile Indian-born novelists were both publishing novels about music in the same year.

However, though both novels share common themes – music and love – and play out the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice (the parable of love lost and almost restored by the power of music), An Equal Music and The Ground Beneath Her Feet are marked more by their very striking dissimilarities. Rushdie's book is about rock music and is typically exuberant and wildly expansive. As if to escape easy categorization, Seth sets his novel in Europe with an all-white English cast and the high classical tradition of European music as his theme.