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The Life and Works of Ruskin Bond
Meena G. Khorana
ISBN: 0-313-31185-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-31185-7
184 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 5/30/2003
List Price: $76.95 (UK Sterling Price: £53.95)
Discount Price: $38.48 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Ruskin Bond is known internationally as one of India's most prolific writers in English for children, young adults, and adults. This literary biography analyzes the impact of personal, social, geographical, political, and literary influences on Bond's worldview, aesthetic principles, and writings. Connecting the development of Bond's writing career over the past 50 years to the evolution of the publishing industry in India, Khorana details the author's pioneering work in the field of children's and young adult literature, and his contribution to diasporic and postcolonial/post-independence literatures. She concludes that it is Bond's versatile, original, and elegant writing in a variety of genres that continue to endear him to readers around the world.

According to the author, despite Bond's British background, he does not write about India from a Eurocentric perspective. Having lived the majority of his life in India, he knows the country as an insider, writing with an authenticity and emotional engagement about the land and the people of the Himalayas and small-town India. Khorana analyzes his novels and short stores, and highlights his juxtaposition of his protagonists' individual dramas against larger social, moral, and metaphysical issues. In addition, she reveals how the autobiographical and regional elements in Bond's work provide insight into universal themes such as the tension between past and present, city life versus rural values, the dignity of ordinary folk, preservation of the environment, and living in harmony with nature.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
    Acknowledgments
    Children of the British Raj
    At "Home" in England? A Postcolonial Dilemma
    Back in Dehra: "The People and Places I Have Known"
    The Transitional Years: 1959-1963
    "The Great Escape to the Mountains"
    A Long Summer Afternoon: The Charmed World of Childhood
    The Duality of Nature; Poems and Stories for Children
    The Mountains Are Kind to Writers
    Selected Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: MEENA G. KHORANA is Professor of English at Morgan State University. She is the author of The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood, 1991) and Africa in Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood, 1994).
LCC Class: 823
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