Ruskin Bond: A Critical Evaluation (Hardbound - 2012)

Ruskin Bond is the most popular Indian English novelist and short-story writer, though he has not received the acclaim he deserved from the critics and even from the reading public. Bond’s novellas and novels depict the life of the adolescents. All narrations are made by them. He describes their circumstances and helplessness realistically and ushers us into the world of the downtrodden and of poverty without being pessimistic.

Ruskin Bond: A Critical Evaluation, perhaps the first full length study of his work, discusses his novels and major short-stories for a better understanding of his narrative. Besides introduction, which evaluates Bond as a writer and draws a comparison of Bond with other eminent writers of the past who dealt with the problems of adolescents in their fiction like Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling, the book analyses critically Bond’s important novels: The Room on the Roof; Vagrants in the Valley; Delhi is Not Far; and A Flight of Pigeons. An exclusive chapter has been devoted to Bond’s writing technique and art of narration. It describes how Bond follows the line of traditional writers like Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London and Hugh Walpole, instead of following the avant-garde novelists of our time. Bond’s plot construction, characterization and the element of humour have been discussed in detail. Conclusion highlights the autobiographical elements in Bond’s novels and emphasizes the originality of his style.

The book will be useful for the students and teachers of English literature and researchers in this field.

M.P. Singh, a scholar of national repute, was Professor and Head, Department of English, Kanpur University (Now CSJM University) from 1988 to 2002. Besides publishing a good number of research papers in reputed journals, he has chaired academic sessions in national and international seminars. His published works include W.B. Yeats: His Poetry and Politics; Research Methods in English; Modern Linguistics; Jonathan Swift: A Critical Study and Alexander Pope: A Critical Study of His Major Poems. He is the main author of this book.

Ravi Jauhari is Associate Professor of English at DSM (P.G.) College, Unnao (UP). He has teaching experience of more than twenty-five years and has guided fifteen research scholars. He has published research papers in various research journals of national repute. His first published book is Research Compendium. He is co-editor of Journal of English Studies and Social Sciences—a research journal published biannually from Kanpur.

Nigam J. Dave is Assistant Professor of English at P.D. Pandya Mahila Commerce College, Ahmedabad (Gujarat). He has published two research papers on John Ruskin. He has been teaching English literature for the last fifteen years.