The Humble Administrator's Garden

'Vikram Seth's poems...should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility? Seth knows (not as a tourist, but from the inside) four cultures: his native India; England; California; communist China. Here he inspects them all respectfully and eagerly, and without partisanship or facile ironies balances each of them against the others.' - Donald Davie