London, July 18: Vikram Seth has secured 1.3 million pounds for his memoir about a great uncle and aunt, following an auction involving five publishing houses. The amount is believed to be the largest ever payment for a work of non-fiction. Time Warner has agreed to pay the sum for ''two lives'', having outbid the other publishers ''substantially'', according to Seth's Edinburgh-based agent Giles Gordon, who secured the deal after five short-listed publishers bid for the work on the basis of a proposal and a presentation by the author himself. The book is not due to be published before autumn 2005. Time Warner's imprint little, brown outbid Orion, publisher of ''a suitable boy'' and penguin, the under-bidder, which was reported to have offered 1 million pounds. Richard Beswick, little, brown's publishing editor said that it was not unusual to bid for a work without seeing a draft manuscript. ''not for a writer of Vikram Seth's stature. He brings warmth, vitality and a profound enriching humanity to all his writing.''

The latest deal has put Seth, in financial terms, into the ranks of contemporary literature's very elite. He has beaten even Martin Amis's controversial 500,000 pounds for ''The Information''.


''Two lives'' is the story of the marriage between Seth's great uncle Shanti and aunt Henny, a German Jew, who met in pre-war Germany as Hhitler came to power and had escaped to England where Seth lived with them during his adolescence. The story covers the Raj, the third Reich, the holocaust and British post-war society.

Bureau Report