Review Paper
Year: 2020 | Month: October-December | Volume: 4 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 1-5
Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet- A People’s Travelogue of Cultural Assimilation
Ashima Sona
Former Head, Department of English, Assam Don Bosco University.
ABSTRACT
Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet is a book that falls in the genre of travel writing. It does not focus on the usual course of monumental history and the architectural details of the places visited. It is in fact an intriguing description of the people of China and Tibet and presented like a Travel Memoir. This paper tries to study the biographical details built upon ordinary interactions with simple humanity that come en route. The richness of the local colours is poured out through various physical, cultural and racial engagements. There is a strange warmth exhibited that brings out the psyche of the people towards a foreigner. It endorses assimilation humanly and culturally. The tone of Romanticism seeps into the descriptions and images about the life and surroundings of the ordinary masses. The theme of Diaspora and Cultural assimilation runs throughout the narrative such that it omits the sense of any cultural displacement and reveals Vikram Seth as a writer with a deep understanding of humanity and culture.
Keywords: People, Memoir, Interaction, Cultural assimilation, Diaspora, Romanticism.
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