Arun Joshi, The Last Labyrinth

Pier Paolo Piciucco (Università Degli Studi di Torino)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.1.03: Indian Writing and Culture: Post-colonial, 1947-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1980

Places

India (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Last Labyrinth won Arun Joshi the Sahitya Academy Award, India's most prestigious literary prize. Written in the first person, like The Foreigner and The Apprentice, it is an uncompromising search inside the deepest recesses of the human soul, hence one of the symbolic meanings the title acquires. The personal, intimate tone of the narrative, at times giving the reader the impression of a diary, suggests an autobiographical dimension: the protagonist, Som Bhaskar, is an industrialist like his creator. A sort of arrival point in the whole of Joshi's fiction, Som incarnates the quintessential male hero in the literary production of his author: intelligent, sensible, curious, self-centred, somewhat indrawn, well-…

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840 words

Citation: Piciucco, Pier Paolo. "The Last Labyrinth". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14905, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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