The Serpent and the Rope

Rao, Raja

ISBN 10: 0879512202 / ISBN 13: 9780879512200

Published by Overlook Press, 1986

About this Item

Woodstock. 1986. January 1986. Overlook Press. 1st Overlook Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Markings On Bottom Edge. 0879512202. 407 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Juan Suarez Botas. keywords: Asia India Literature World Literature. DESCRIPTION - Indian writers say that the truly Indian novel has not yet appeared. There has been nothing which adequately reflects 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 harmony THE SERPENT AND THE ROPE achieves, Here the full implications of the meeting of East and West are described on the most intimate plane by Rama, an Indian, who meets Madeleine at a French university. Their marriage is the central theme of the book. Can they preserve their identities, or must one sacrifice 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 in himself. While there he meets his friend Pratap's fiancEe, Savithri, an event which is to alter the whole perspective of his life. When he returns to France Rama and Madeleine have to face their problems and find their own solutions. Raja Rao's KANTHAPURA was acclaimed as one of the most significant novels since E.M. Forster's A PASSAGE TO INDIA; the subject of THE SERPENT AND THE ROPE is even more fundamental and universal. This and his memorable style, a compound of the unhurried breath of the Eastern sense of time with a fresh and Indian imagery, provide not only a compelling story but a new literary experience. inventory #26890 Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Markings On Bottom Edge.

Seller Inventory # z26890

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Serpent and the Rope
• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0879512202
• ISBN 13: 9780879512200
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

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

Reviews

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.