SOURCE: A review of Beastly Tales from Here and There, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 447-48.

In the following review, Perry lauds Beastly Tales from Here and There.

On reading the delightful animal fables gathered in Beastly Tales from Here and There, it is tempting to exclaim, "Aha, now Vikram Seth's talent for rhyming wit has at last found its proper form!" To say that much, however, one would have to reexamine closely at least The Humble Administrator's Garden and The Golden Gate as well as especially the light Roman "quatrains" in All You Who Sleep Tonight. The issues for a critical reader in those previous books, however, stretch far beyond their formal pleasures, for they arouse moralistic questions about the exact nature of the feelings moving their diverse rhythms and anthropological questions about the accuracy of their supposedly keen, often witty observations, most dubiously...