University Of Texas In Austin Takes Possession Of Indian-American Writer Raja Rao's Work!

Acclaimed Indian-American writer and philosopher Raja Rao's writings that encompass a comprehensive range of contents ranging from manuscripts of his renowned novels including "Kanthapura, "The Chessmaster and his Moves," and "The Serpent and the Rope" to some of his unpublished works, has been procured by the University of Texas in a bid to promote the study of arts and humanities.

Rao's archive will now be available for research and study at the Harry Ransom Center, which is a humanities research library and museum situated at the The University of Texas in Austin.

According to Ransom center, Rao's status as one of India's highly acclaimed writers who earned the Neustadt International Prize for Literature besides other honours, makes this acquisition a notable one. The Harry Ransom Center specialises in the collection of cultural artefacts and literary from Europe and the United States.

Rao's archive encompass contents in some of the language that he spoke - native Kannada, English, French, as well as Sanskrit, IndiaWest reported.

Rao is thought-about as one of India's primal and most distinguished English-language writer. He was the author of several works of fiction, talk essays, short stories and even poetry. Rao was also the author of the highly-acclaimed 1998 biography dubbed, "The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi."

A 1964 New York Times Book Review noted that Rao was perhaps the and most brilliant and without question, the most interesting novelist of the present-day India. One of his novels titles, "Kanthapura," even reaped the applause of renowned English writer E. M. Forster.

Courageously departing from the traditional European novel pattern, Rao has indigenised it in the course of accommodating contents from the Indian literary tradition, according to R Parthasarathy, a retired professor of English at Skidmore College.

Rao pursued his education from Aligarh Muslim University, the University of Madras and other foreign universities. Rao had already gained International popularity when the former UT President John Silber recruited him to instil knowledge of Buddhism and Indian philosophy in Austin, NDTV reported.

For his philosophical novel titled "The Serpent and the Rope," Rao won the Indian National Academy of Letters' Sahitya Akademi Award for Literature in 1964. He also earned the highly-coveted Padma Bhushan Award, which is cited as India's highest awards for literature in 1969, and he posthumously earned the Padma Vibhushan in 2007.

In addition to Roa's papers, the Ransom Center comprises of manuscript collections for a number of renowned foreign novelists including Amos Tutuola, Gabriel García Márquez, Doris Lessing, Anita Desai, and J. M. Coetzee.