[The Serpent and the Rope] reflects the cultural synthesis effected in the mind of the author in his own encounter with Europe as epitomized by his intellectual French wife. Transcending these is his love for Savithri, a pseudonym for an Indian woman with whom Rao has maintained a Platonic relationship for some thirty years. To express the divine quality of their love, Rao borrows from the literature of Europe and India both, and the result is a monument to absolute love coupled with a series of metaphysical questions answerable only in terms of a lifelong philosophical quest. (p. 247)

In total, The Serpent and the Rope is an overwhelming novel, for Raja Rao a tour de force which encapsules and communicates a philosophical predicament which has occupied the better part of his life. In addition, this novel comprises a major synthesis of Eastern and Western cultures in the vast...