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 The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

for his novel '' The Last Labyrinth'' in 1982. His novels have characters who are urban, English speaking and disturbed for some reason. 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."

Life

Arun Joshi was raised in

Varanasi Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic t ...

, Uttar Pradesh, where his father A C Joshi was Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University. On returning to India, he began working at

Delhi Cloth & General Mills DCM Textiles, formerly known as Delhi Cloth & General Mills (founded in 1889 by Rai Bahadur Ram Kishen Das Gurwale), is an Indian conglomerate which was initially a textile business which opened its first mill in Delhi. Starting from late 1980s ...

, 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. Joshi lived a reclusive life and generally avoided publicity.

The Foreigner

''The Foreigner'' was published in 1968.

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.

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 Khushwant Singh (born Khushal Singh, 2 February 1915 – 20 March 2014) was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write ''Train to Pakistan'' in 1956 (made ...

, 1968. *''Laia Shri Ram: A Study in Entrepreneurship and Industrial Management'', 1975.

External links

Arun Joshi on Literary Encyclopaedia

References

20th-century Indian novelists 1939 births 1993 deaths Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English 20th-century Indian short story writers Writers from Varanasi Novelists from Uttar Pradesh {{India-writer-stub