Background
Arun Joshi was born in 1939 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. He grew up in a family of scholars.
1450 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS 66045, United States
The aerial view of the University of Kansas where Arun Joshi received his Bachelor of Science degree.
77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
The front building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Arun Joshi obtained his Master of Science degree.
(The Foreigner is the story of a young man who is detached...)
The Foreigner is the story of a young man who is detached, almost estranged, a man who sees himself as a stranger, an alien wherever he goes or lives – in Kenya where he was born, in UK and USA where he was a student and in India where he finally settles down
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8122201466/?tag=2022091-20
1968
(The compellingly thought-provoking novel in which the nor...)
The compellingly thought-provoking novel in which the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire to rub shoulders
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8122204678/?tag=2022091-20
1971
(This splendid novel is serious, disturbing, lyrical and i...)
This splendid novel is serious, disturbing, lyrical and irresistibly readable, a fascinating exploration into the turbulent inner world of a successful urban India
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008HZ1X0G/?tag=2022091-20
1981
(Using an artistically satisfying combination of fantasy, ...)
Using an artistically satisfying combination of fantasy, prophecy, and a startlingly real vision of everyday politics, this apolitical fable is truly a parable of the times
https://www.amazon.com/City-River-Arun-Joshi-ebook/dp/B07KFLDLZ5/?tag=2022091-20
1990
Arun Joshi was born in 1939 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. He grew up in a family of scholars.
Arun Joshi studied in India and the United States. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Kansas and a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Arun Joshi had worked as chief of recruitment and training department of Delhi Cloth & General Mills (currently DCM Textiles) till 1965 when he occupied the post of the executive director at Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources in Delhi.
Three years later, he published his first novel. The Foreigner, in which a young man languishes in Delhi after having fallen in love abroad. His second novel, ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ followed in 1971. It concerned a wealthy youth who vanishes into the wilds of India. Then ‘The Apprentice’ came, wherein an apathetic civil servant realizes a measure of enlightenment following a decline into corruption.
Arun Joshi's subsequent novels became ‘The Last Labyrinth’, in which restless businessman Som Bhaskar traveled from Bombay to the holy city Benares, where he found himself increasingly confused. A complex, socio-philosophical novel that extolled the virtues of effort over achievement, ‘The City and the River’ was issued in 1990.
In addition to writing novels, Joshi produced a short-story collection titled ‘The Survivor’ and wrote with Khushwant Singh a biography of Shri Ram, the innovative Indian industrialist who helped develop weaving as one of India’s profitable businesses. Joshi delineated Shri Ram’s business acumen in 1975 ‘Laila Shri Ram: A Study in Entrepreneurship and Industrial Management.’
(The Foreigner is the story of a young man who is detached...)
1968(The compellingly thought-provoking novel in which the nor...)
1971(Using an artistically satisfying combination of fantasy, ...)
1990(This splendid novel is serious, disturbing, lyrical and i...)
1981(This is a novel totally different in tone from all other ...)
1975
Quotations:
"The most futile cry of man is his impossible wish to be understood."
"...I marvelled at the intense beauty of this human relationship that was born out of so much love and was destined, perhaps inevitably, to end in a tragedy of such terrible proportions."
"You want to have faith. But you also want to reserve the right to challenge your own faith when it suits you."
"But, then, the truest perceptions of life, for me at least, have always proved to be the most elusive and the most shortlived."
"You would be surprised. There are people whose sense of identity at the end of life doesn’t go beyond: I own this house; earn so much; have four children; drive this car; have so much in the bank and so on. Maybe such identity is not enough for you."
Arun Joshi didn’t love public life and lived in solitude. His books were published only by Orient Paperbacks and other local publishers.
Quotes from others about the person
"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. He never mocks the men and women whom he critiques." Aditya Sudarshan, author
"[Arun Joshi is] one of the very few Indo-English novelists who holds a mirror to the subtleties and complexities of contemporary Indian life." Basavaraaaj S. Naikar, reviewer
"Arun Joshi is a novelist who, more strongly than most, has brought to his work that detachment from the everyday, while still acknowledging its existence, which is perhaps India's particular gift to the literature of the world. The rising up into the transcendental is a trait that has increasingly marked out his novels from his first, The Foreigner." Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating, writer
Arun Joshi was married to Rukmini Lal, a daughter of a shareholder.