Indian writer and activist Vikram Seth was BOTD in 1952. Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to a prosperous middle-class family, he was raised in London and India. After attending private schools in India, he studied at Oxford University, Stanford University and Nanjing University. He published his first volume of poetry, Mappings, in 1980, and attracted critical praise for his 1983 comic travelogue From Heaven Lake, an account of his journey hitchhiking through China, India and Tibet. He came to wider international attention with his 1986 novel The Golden Gate, written in verse in homage to Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, chronicling a group of polysexual yuppies in Silicon Valley-era San Francisco. He became globally famous for his 1993 novel A Suitable Boy, a sprawling, multi-generational drama following four families in post-Partition 1950s India. The book’s compelling narrative and epic length drew comparisons with Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, becoming an unlikely international hit. His other works include the novel An Equal Music, a memoir Two Lives, multiple volumes of poetry and a volume of children’s stories. A Suitable Girl, his long-promised sequel to A Suitable Boy, has yet to be published. Openly if discreetly gay, little is known of his personal life. In 2006, he led a campaign to abolish India’s colonial-era laws prohibiting homosexuality, which were finally repealed in 2018.