Raja Rao, 97; novelist wrote about modern-day India
NEW YORK -- Raja Rao, a novelist who helped create the English literature of 20th-century India, has died. He was 97.
Mr. Rao died July 8 of heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, his wife, Susan Raja-Rao, told The
His works include ``Kanthapura," which explores turbulence in a South Indian village, and the semiautobiographical ``The Serpent and the Rope."
He was born Raja in the Indian town of Hassan.
Like many South Indians of the time, he had no surname; the novelist added Rao as an adult, to get a passport.
He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Madras, where he studied English, in 1929.
He continued his studies in France, first at the University of Montpellier and later at the Sorbonne.
In 1966 he joined the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin, where he taught Indian philosophy. He retired in 1980.
