I’ll be honest. I think this book was a lot of metaphysical wank. I enjoyed the last 10 but the first 150 pages were hard to swallow.
In the Penguin Modern Classics edition, the introduction for this was about 40 pages, which was a fair chunk of the book. I skip the introduction in most fiction that I read, but I found that it was necessary after getting through half the book — not that it helped.
While the intro gave some context on the difference between Western writing and the Indian mind, the bit about the book was only discussed within 5 pages. It also told that I would need to know the author back to front so that I don’t “misread” the book.
Personally I don’t feel obliged. I took another day just to read up on the philosophy behind the book and Raja Rao’s writings, just in case I can find something to salvage from the book. I didn’t, and I still find that this thing is a lot of wank.
