Book took him on a trip

Sorry if I’m a little fuzzy, but I just got back from India.
Well, no. That’s not true at all.
But I’ve just finished a novel about India in 1951 and 1952 that has taken me to the other side of the world.
And I’m dealing with the equivalent of literary jet lag as a result.
The book I’ve just put down — with a thump — is Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy.”
All 1,474 pages of it.
The “suitable boy” of the title is an appropriate bridegroom for a young Indian woman, and the book is in many ways a love story. But it’s also an immersion in Hindu and Muslim culture and the history of those troubled young years when India and Pakistan went through “the partition.”
For me, it has also been just the latest stop on a reading tour that has taken me nearly around the world in the past 12 months.
Books can take you anywhere.
That’s particularly true of fiction, where tales of individual lives help us imagine an alien reality.
I’ve always believed that the best way to understand another culture or another country wasn’t by reading its history or textbooks but by reading its fiction, its poetry, its folktales, and its mythology.
A couple of days ago, after finishing the last sentence of “A Suitable Boy” and setting it aside with an appropriate thump, I found myself reflecting on where fiction has taken me in the past year.
Let’s take a look at my fictional passport stamps.
•Since last June, I’ve been to Russia — via fiction — many times. Given a Nook on Fathers’ Day last year, I suddenly found myself consuming Turgenev (“Fathers and Sons”), Pasternak (“Dr. Zhivago”), Tolstoy (“War and Peace” and “Anna Karinina”), and short stories by Dostoevsky.
•I’ve been to Egypt, reading Alaa al Aswany’s “The Yacoubian Building.”
•I’ve been to Burma, not just literally by via literature, thanks to George Orwell’s “Burmese Days.”
•I’ve been to England with John LeCarre, the great spy novelist.
•I’ve been to Somalia with Detroit’s Elmore Leonard, master of the great paperback read.
•I’ve been to Copenhagen with Michael Frayn’s play about the questions of physics behind the atomic bomb.
•I’ve been back to Nigeria with Chinua Achebe in “Arrow of God.”
•I’ve been to Chicago in the early years of the Eisenhower administration as measured out by the thoughtful novelist Ward Just.
•I’ve been to Batista-era Cuba with Albany, N.Y., novelist William Kennedy.
•And I’ve been to Nanjing, China, during its rape and unimaginable cruelty at the hands of Japanese troops as recounted by Ha Jin.
Okay, so big whoop, you’ve done a lot of reading in the past year, Mr. Publisher.
But my real point is, you can do this too.
Your world is only limited by your imagination.
Corny? Of course. True? You bet.
Much of my past year’s reading was done on my Nook. Much of the rest came as gifts at Christmas.
But if you’re not lucky enough to have such thoughtful children, you do have something amazing at your disposal.
It’s your library.
Use it wisely, and it will take you around the world.
And as to “A Suitable Boy” or any of the other titles I’ve mentioned, I recommend them all.
Bon voyage.
Send me a postcard now and then.

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