Description
R. Raj Rao brings into play all the senses in focusing on an India which makes no concessions to the travel agent’s romance or the aid agencies’ image of defeated despair. As Nissim Ezekiel writes, ‘Images of India, convincingly realistic, proliferate in these poems. We confront a variety of attitudes and values, which add up to a distinct personality and voice. There is no compromise with romantic urges. The inner search and its poetic expression are appropriately related; rough, sharp, ironic sometimes, and always serious.’
ISBN: 978-0948833496
R. Raj Rao is a writer, poet, and teacher of literature and one of India’s leading gay-rights activists. His 2003 novel, The Boyfriend, is one of the first gay novels to come from India. Rao was one of the first recipients of the newly established QuebecIndia awards. R. Raj Rao is the author of almost a dozen poetry, fiction, plays, biography, and criticism books.
His collection of poems, BomGay, was made into an uncensored short film by the late Riyad Wadia in 1996. Perhaps no other Indian writer’s personal, literary and academic life is steeped in queer culture as much as R. Raj Rao’s.
He is a former Professor and Head of the Department of English at the Savitribai Phule Pune University.
