The Serpent and the Rope - Hardcover

Rao, Raja

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879512202 ISBN 13: 9780879512200

Publisher: Overlook Books, 1986

Synopsis

Studying abroad after World War II, Ramaswamy, a Brahmin from Mysore, India, falls in love with Madeleine, a young French woman

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0879512202
• ISBN 13: 9780879512200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 408