And it shows. Despite all the random circumstances that led to its birth, The Rivered Earth is vintage Vikram Seth—a form-defying blend of his miscellaneous passions, his unobtrusive prose, his poems and translations from Chinese, Sanskrit, Hindi poetry. It’s also part memoir, giving a rare glimpse into his intimate life: the “muse failures”; the goofing around while Roth chases him for the poems he’s supposed to be writing; the hurt vanity when Roth rejects one of his poems; the conquest of writer’s block by getting drunk; the house of the reclusive Anglican poet, George Herbert, in Salisbury, where he made a home with Phillippe Honore, the lived-in rooms, the crowded kitchen table, the oak tree outside; the break-up that left him so heart-broken that he missed that year’s performance of their joint project, the resuming of the friendship—conversations, wine, bullying Alec Roth into composing a special piece for Phillippe.... It’s an oddly beautiful book, so quietly confessional that you almost miss it, apparently random, but pulling off the different elements that went into its making with a barely perceptible mastery, personal and impersonal at the same time.