Apparently Penguin Books India has recently re-issued four Raja Rao titles -- Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope, The Cat and Shakespeare, and a volume of Collected Stories (though I can't find any listings of these books at their official site ...); see, for example, S.B.Easwaran in Outlook on The Soul in its Village or Rajni George in Open on The Return of Raja Rao.
English-writing -- and longtime US resident -- Rao did publish many of his works in the US, but most everything is out of print (the exception: Kanthapura, which New Directions faithfully upholds; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com). Disappointingly, these Penguin Classics are apparently geographically limited, too -- though they do seem to be available, reasonably priced, in the UK; get, for example, The Serpent and the Rope at Amazon.co.uk.
I've always been a fan, though the only title under review at the complete review is the distinctly second-tier Comrade Kirillov; I read all the others long before starting the site, with just The Chessmaster and His Moves still to properly get to.
In The New York Times Book Review in 1964 Santha Rama Rau already suggested: "Raja Rao is perhaps the most brilliant -- and certainly the most interesting -- writer of modern India" (though admittedly Americans were hardly paying attention to anything from India at the time). Pratapaditya Pal's review of The Serpent and the Rope in The Los Angeles Times (August, 1986 ...) warns it is: "a highly cerebral novel that will be enjoyed primarily by intellectual readers" and that: "the dialogues are often much too erudite and, sometimes, even contrived", but I have to admit it was right up my alley.
Definitely an old master who still deserves a place in the contemporary library.
English-writing -- and longtime US resident -- Rao did publish many of his works in the US, but most everything is out of print (the exception: Kanthapura, which New Directions faithfully upholds; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com). Disappointingly, these Penguin Classics are apparently geographically limited, too -- though they do seem to be available, reasonably priced, in the UK; get, for example, The Serpent and the Rope at Amazon.co.uk.
I've always been a fan, though the only title under review at the complete review is the distinctly second-tier Comrade Kirillov; I read all the others long before starting the site, with just The Chessmaster and His Moves still to properly get to.
In The New York Times Book Review in 1964 Santha Rama Rau already suggested: "Raja Rao is perhaps the most brilliant -- and certainly the most interesting -- writer of modern India" (though admittedly Americans were hardly paying attention to anything from India at the time). Pratapaditya Pal's review of The Serpent and the Rope in The Los Angeles Times (August, 1986 ...) warns it is: "a highly cerebral novel that will be enjoyed primarily by intellectual readers" and that: "the dialogues are often much too erudite and, sometimes, even contrived", but I have to admit it was right up my alley.
Definitely an old master who still deserves a place in the contemporary library.