SOURCE: A review of From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet, in San Francisco Review of Books, Spring, 1984, pp. 22-3.

In the following review, Siegel compares From Heaven Lake to Lawrence Durrell's essays on Greece, arguing that both writers excel in describing the culture, history, and physical qualities of their subjects.

Most accounts about the Republic of China in the general market these days are by old China hands: authors like Theodore White, Ross Terrill, and others who have spent large part of their careers as bona-fide sinologists. But here is a first book by a young man quite new to "China watching." Whatever Vikram Seth may lack in years or experience, however, he makes up for [in From Heaven Lake] with his fresh, literary reportage on the people and day-to-day life of contemporary China.

Seth is an Indian, albeit one educated at Oxford and at Stanford...