Raja Rao is dead

New Delhi, July 8 (UNI) Celebrated writer Raja Rao, whose novels like 'Kanthapura' and 'The Serpent and the Rope' gave eminence to Indian writing in English in its early days, died in Austin, United State early today, his publishers said here.

Rao, 96, died a peaceful death just before noon, said Kapil Malhotra of Vision Books.

Rao's wife Suman and a number of friends and admirers were by his side when he breathed his last, he said.

Rao had been living in Austin for several years.

Winner of the Padma Vibhushan in 1969, Rao was a member of the trinity of Indian writers in English along with contemporaries Mulk Raj Anand and R K Narayan.

Rao had burst onto the literary scene in the 1940s with his first novel 'Kanthapura' when little was known outside the country about Indian writing in English.

The novel was praised by English writer E M Forster as ''perhaps the best novel to come out of India''.

'Kanthapura' was followed by four other novels - 'The Serpent and the Rope' (1960), 'That Cat and Shakespeare' (1966), 'Comrade Kirillov' (1976) and 'The Chessmaster and His Moves' (1988).

His last published work was 'The Great Indian Way' (1998), the biography of Mahatma Gandhi. His new novel, 'Daughter of the Mountain', was to be published on November 8, his 97th birthday.

Born in Mysore, Rao went to Europe at the age of 19 to study literature at the University of Montpellier and at Sorbonne. He later moved to the United States teaching Indian philosophy and Buddhism at the University of Austin.

He had been living in Austin for the past 30 years, regularly visiting his native place.

''The Grand Three of Indian English Writing are now gone. Each one was very distinctive in what he wrote about. R K Narayan wrote comic irony, Mulk Raj Anand about the poor and the downdrodden while Raja Rao was philosophical,'' said Mr Malhotra, who knew all the three writers.

''All of them were different individuals and simple,'' he added.

UNI SKS/FZ MIR BST1952