Raja Rao was born on November 8, 1908 in Hassan, in the state of Mysore in south India, into a well-known Brahman family. His native language was Kanarese, but his post-graduate education was in France, and all his publications in book form have been in English. Like the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, writing in English, Rao has been concerned with language and consciousness. Rao was educated at Muslim schools. After taking a degree from Madras University, he left India for Europe, where he remained for a decade. He studied at the universities of Montpellier and the Sorbonne, doing research in Christian theology and history. In 1931 he married a French academic, Camille Mouly. Later he depicted the breakdown of their marriage in 'The Serpent and the Rope'. His first stories Rao published in French and English. During 1931-32 he contributed four articles written in Kannada for 'Jaya Karnataka', an influential journal.
His Selected works are :
Kanthapura, 1938
Changing India, 1939 (ed., with I. Singh)
The Cow of the Barricades, and Other Stories, 1947
Whither India, 1948 (with I. Singh)
The Serpent and the Rope, 1960
The Cat and Shakespeare, 1965
Comrade Kirilov, 1976
The Policeman and the Rose, 1978
The Chessmaster and His Moves, 1988
On the Ganga Ghat, 1993
The Meaning of India, 1996
Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi, 1998
The Best of Raja Rao, 1998
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