Socio-Cultural Aspects of Life in the Selected Novels of Raja Rao (Hardbound - 1999)

Raja Rao is an erudite scholar and an ennobling Indian novelist in English. His sensibility is verily Indian and presents a unified vision of life.

His creditable career as a novelist, beginning with his first novel Kanthapura (1938), Spans over almost more than half a century. The novel is a repository of the eventful phases of Indian’s struggle for Independence on Gandhian lines. The novel merits the distinction of being a paradigmatic text with the deft handling of myth and history.

The Serpent and The Rope (1960) renowned for its metaphysical moorings is a compendium of the Indian composite cultural complexities interacting as they do with the cross cultural and transactional influences. The text holds out infinite possibilities for the intending readers set out to undertake a serious study.

The Cat and Shakespeare (1965), Comrade Kirillov (1976) are intact with the solidity of an inbuilt structural irony and put up an amazing picture, in an amusing manner, of the piquant situation obtaining all over India in the post-Independence period, soon after the euphoria of Independence struggle ceased to exercise its influence.

The study being selective, is confined to socio-cultural aspects of life as reflected in the above texts.

Dr. A.S. Rao is working as a Selection Grade Lecturer in English in Reader Cadre at Govt. College for Women, Nalgonda, an affiliate of Osmania University, Hyderabad, A.P. He was born on 24th of November, 1945. He did his P.G. in English in 1974 from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

He holds another P.G. in Philosophy (1972 from Osmania University). He secured M.Phil. from Osmania University, Hyderabad in 1992, under the supervision of Dr. C. Vijayasree of Osmania University. He obtained his Ph.D. from Osmania University, Hyderabad on Myth and History in the Contemporary Indian Novel in English: A Study of Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason, Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, guided by Prof. Balakothandaraman of Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Dr. Rao is keenly interested in literary pursuits. He is an active functionary of Readers’ Forum Nalgonda. He is a member of IACLALS — Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. The work on hand is his first publication A volume of poetry each in Telugu and English awaits publication shortly, besides one on post-modernism to be written in Telugu which he has taken up on the request of local friends.