The serpent and the rope - Hardcover

Raja Rao

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0837184371 ISBN 13: 9780837184371

Publisher: Greenwood Press, 1975

Synopsis

The Serpent and the Rope introduces to American readers India's greatest novelist. Reflecting the flavor and wholeness of the traditional Indian way of life, where fact and fable, philosophy and the matter-of-fact blend into one, this semi-autobiographical novel can be called timeless, just as India herself seems timeless and other-worldly by virtue of her unchanging rituals.But the novel also portrays a very definite period of time, describing the full implications of the meeting of East and West on the most intimate plane through the story of Rama, an Indian, and Madeleine, a French girl, who meet at a French university shortly after World War II. Their marriage is the central theme of the book, and it is in telling the story of this marriage that Rama reveals, more deeply than most writers are able to suggest in their lifetime, the meaning of love. For these two people it becomes a question either of preserving their identities or of sacrificing an inherited background to make their marriage a success. Family ties on both sides do not help, and Rama's trip back to India for his father's illness forcibly reminds him of the underlying contrasts between India and Europe, and of a certain conflict between them and himself. While there he meets his friend Pratap's fiancée, Savithri, an event which is to bring many forgotten questions to the surface and to alter the whole perspective of his life. When Rama returns to France, he and Madeleine have to face their problems and find their own solutions.To express his fundamental and universal message, Raja Rao has created a memorable style, a compound of the unhurried breath of the Eastern sense of time with a fresh and personal imagery. Together with the compelling story he unfolds, this provides for a remarkable new literary experience.

About this title

About the Author

Raja Rao was an Indian writer of English language novels and short stories. His works were deeply rooted in Hinduism. His work spans across a variety of genres and has brought about varied and significant contribution to Indian English literature and world literature. Raja Rao was awarded the Neustadt International Prize in Literature in the year 1988. The Serpent and the Rope made him one of the finest Indian prose stylists and eventually won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964. In 1969, he won the Padma Bhushan and in 2007 he won the Padma Vibhushan.

From Publishers Weekly

This new edition of a book first published in 1960 and out of print for two decades, is likely to prove an insurmountable challenge to the general reader. Teeming wtih arcane legends, philosophical dialogues, songs and poetry, studded with a host of characters and a quantity of exotic locales, the novel seems a paradigm of India itselfas vast, diffuse and enigmatic as Western perception would have it. Its various parts are loosely bound together by a thin narrative thread describing the marriage of Rama, a young Brahmin doing graduate work in France, to Madeleine, an ethereal French college teacher, some six years his senior. In her eagerness to attain Eastern wisdom, Madeleine first casts her husband in the role of guru. Later, as her "saintliness" (or madness) progresses, she transcends the need for human companionship, leaving Rama free to pursue his own search for self-awarenessa quest that consistently leaves the reader uninvolved. This "sad and uneven chronicle of a life" is rendered without the kind of dramatic focus necessary to bridge the gulf between the protagonist's sensibility and ours.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwood Press
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0837184371
• ISBN 13: 9780837184371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 407