Arun Joshi

Arun Joshi (1939-1993) was an Indian writer. He is known for his novels The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel The Last Labyrinth in 1982.[1] His novels have characters who are urban, English speaking and disturbed for some reason.[1] According to one commentator, "The shallowness of middle class society is not for him a point of rhetoric, intended to show off his own enlightened superiority, but a theme to be explored with actual concern."[1]

Arun Joshi
Born1939
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
Died1993
CitizenshipIndian

Life

Arun Joshi was raised in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, where his father A C Joshi was Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University.[2]

On returning to India, he began working at Delhi Cloth & General Mills, North India's first textile factory and among the earliest joint-stock companies of the country, as chief of its recruitment and training department. He married Rukmini Lal, a daughter of a shareholder. He resigned from D.C.M. in 1965 while continuing to be the executive director of Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources in Delhi.[3]

Joshi lived a reclusive life and generally avoided publicity.[4] He published locally with Orient Paperbacks. Even though multi-national publishers like Penguin had entered the publishing space in India, Arun Joshi stuck with Orient all his life.

The Foreigner

The Foreigner was published in 1968.[5]

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas was written in 1971 and tells the story of a US returned Indian named Billy Biswas.[1]

Works

Novels
  • The Foreigner, 1968
  • The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, 1971
  • The Apprentice, 1974
  • The Last Labyrinth, 1981
  • The City and the River, 1990

Short stories
  • The Survivor and Other Stories, 1975.
  • The Only American From Our Village.

Other
  • Shri Ram: A Biography, with Khushwant Singh, 1968.
  • Laia Shri Ram: A Study in Entrepreneurship and Industrial Management, 1975.

References
  1. Sudarshan, Aditya. "The strange case of Arun Joshi". The Hindu. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  2. Dr. Anjan Kumar. "Existential Angst in The Novels of Arun Joshi". Asvameg. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  3. Dr. Shankar Kumar (2003). The Novels of Arun Joshi A Critical Study. Atlantic. ISBN 9788126902088. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  4. Prasad, Madhusudan (1981). "Arun Joshi - The Novelist". Indian Literature. 24 (4): 103–114. JSTOR 23330214.
  5. Dr. Abnish Singh Chauhan (2016). The Fictional World of Arun Joshi: Paradigm Shift in Values. Authorspress. ISBN 9789352071128. Retrieved 20 May 2020.


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