The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the archive of Indian author and philosopher Raja Rao.
Rao’s estate donated the archive of the late author to the humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin.
Rao wrote fiction, short stories, poetry, and essays and is considered one of India’s most iconic English-language novelists. The archive includes everything from unpublished works to manuscripts of his well-known novels Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope and The Chessmaster and his Moves.
“Departing boldly from the European tradition of the novel, Raja Rao has indigenized it in the process of assimilating material from the Indian literary tradition,” stated R. Parthasarathy, professor emeritus of English at Skidmore College. “He has put the novel to uses to which it had not perhaps been put before by exploring the metaphysical basis of writing itself, of in fact the word.”