ABSTRACT:
Contributors:
Alessandro Monti, Christopher Rollason, Letizia Alterno, D. Maya, Pradip Kumarv Patra,
V. Lakshmanan, H.S. Komalesha, M.B. Gaijan, C. Kodhandaraman and Anandan Latha,
Vijay Kumar Pandey, R. Arunachalan, Himadri Roy, N. Sharada Iyer, P. Gopichand,
Sudhir K. Arora, Gauri Shankar Jha and K.S. Anish Kumar
**
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOOK:
RAJA RAO's quest was not only a literary sadhana, but also the expression
of long spans of life spent abroad, mainly in France, Italy, England and
Texas. Yet India remained for him the only place to return to.
Rao has interpreted the reality surrounding him and the world he was
living in through his Vedantic lenses while also assimilating (re-creating)
the philosophy and thinking of distinguished Western writers like Malraux,
Valéry, Baudelaire, Rolland, Silone, Dostoevsky, and many others.
Raja Rao's supra-intellectuality goes beyond the textual, at times too
philosophical (and burdensome) for a common reader. His complex metaphysics
of Advaita Vedanta may discourage a novice reading his works. Yet, for a
discerning critic, reading him is a sadhana.
**
The 18 chapters in this volume include studies focusing on Rao's novels ‘Kanthapura’, ‘The Cat and Shakespeare’, ‘On the Gangha Ghat’ and ‘The Chessmaster and his Moves’, and also on his short stories and on more general aspects of Rao criticism. There is also a select bibliography. Particularly welcome are the two contributions by Letizia Alterno, the leading Rao scholar, already mentioned on this blog, who maintains the dedicated sites at: http.rajarao.free.fr and www.rajarao.com
