Raja Rao
| Raja Rao | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
8 November 1908 Hassan, Mysore, India |
| Died | 8 July 2006 (aged 97) Austin, Texas, United States |
| Occupation | Writer and professor |
| Language | English, French, Kannada |
| Alma mater | University of Texas |
| Period | 1938–1998 |
| Genre | Novel, short story, essay |
| Notable works |
Kanthapura (1938) The Serpent and the Rope (1960) |
| Notable awards |
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| Website | |
| www |
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Raja Rao (8 November 1908 – 8 July 2006) was an Indian writer of English-language novels and short stories, whose works are deeply rooted in Metaphysics. The Serpent and the Rope (1960), a semi-autobiographical novel recounting a search for spiritual truth in Europe and India, established him as one of the finest Indian prose stylists and won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964. For the entire body of his work, Rao was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1988. Rao's wide-ranging body of work, spanning a number of genres, is seen as a varied and significant contribution to Indian English literature, as well as World literature as a whole.
Raja Rao was born on November 8, 1908 in Hassan, in the princely state of Mysore (now in Karnataka in South India), into a Smartha Brahmin family of the Hoysala Karnataka caste. His father, H.V. Krishnaswamy, taught Kannada at Nizam College in what was then Hyderabad State. His mother, Gauramma, was a homemaker who died when Raja Rao was 4 years old. He was the one of 9 siblings, having seven sisters and a brother named Yogeshwara Ananda. His native language was Kannada, but his post-graduate education was in France, and most of his writings, apart from newspaper articles written in Kannada, were in English.
The death of his mother, when he was four, left a lasting impression on the novelist – the absence of a mother and orphanhood are recurring themes in his work. Another influence from early life was his grandfather, with whom he lived in Hassan and Harihalli or Harohalli).
Rao was educated at a Muslim school, the Madarsa-e-Aliya in Hyderabad. After matriculation in 1927, Rao studied for his degree at Nizam's College. at the Osmania University, where he became friends with Ahmad Ali. He began learning French. After graduating from the University of Madras, having majored in English and history, he won the Asiatic Scholarship of the Government of Hyderabad in 1929, for study abroad.
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