The Novels of Arun Joshi: A Critical Study (Hardbound - 2014)

Arun Joshi's fictional world is most strange. Peeling the multiple layers of artificiality, his protagonists seek to confront the mystery of life beyond the last labyrinth. His work represents a unique depiction of the duel between the internal and the external, the intuitive and the imposed. He catches the bewilderment of the individual psyche, confronted with the overbearing socio-cultural environment and the ever-beckoning modern promise of self-gratification/self-fulfilment. In the face of this dual onslaught his protagonists -- Ratan, Billy Biswas, Som, Sindi Oberoi and others -- are seen poised tantalizingly at different junctures of the philosophic spectrum.

Applying sociological, psycho-analytic, structural and other approaches of formal textual analysis, the essays in the present anthology take a fresh look at Arun Joshi's works, revealing areas and stances, hitherto left unexplored, offer critical insights into the working of the protagonists' minds, besides scrutinizing the rhetorical devices and formal strategies, deployed by the novelist for coalescing the matter with the manner.

It is an indispensable source-book for students, researchers and teachers of Indian English and Commonwealth literature in general and Arun Joshi in particular. It will also serve as an insightful and thought-provoking casebook for researchers in Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology.

Dr. Manmohan K. Bhatnagar is Professor, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak (Haryana), India. A distinguished scholar and a veteran teacher of more than two decades' standing, he has been Chairman, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak and also Chairman, State Inter-University Common Syllabi Committee in English, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra.

Having been selected for the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship, Professor Bhatnagar has been a U.G.C-empanelled Resource Person and part of the Guest Faculty at a number of U.G.C.-sponsored Refresher Courses for College Lecturers. He has also chaired individual sessions at national seminars. He has been a U.G.C. fellow at Panjab University, Chandigarh and a U.G.C. Research Associate at University of Poona, Poona.

Professor Bhatnagar's publications include, besides a number of research articles in prestigious journals in India and abroad, Political Consciousness in Indian English Writing, Perspectives and The Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal. His areas of interest are: Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, Commonwealth and Indian English Literature and Third World Fiction.