Raja Rao was a distinguished writer, philosopher and teacher who wrote the first major Indian novel in English, Kanthapura (1938).

Raja Rao was born on 9 November 1908, in Hassan, in the state of Karnataka in south India, into an orthodox and well known Brahmin family. His father was a teacher and scholar. His early education was in Hyderabad, and then in Aligarh Muslim University, in north India. In 1929 he graduated with B.A. in English and History, and then, on a scholarship awarded by the government of Hyderabad, left for the Collège des Ecossais, Montpellier in France. There he studied French language and literature, and later at the Sorbonne where he studied the Indian influence on Irish literature, under th

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First published 23 January 2004 ; revised 11 July 2006

Citation: Aikant, Satish. "Raja Rao". The Literary Encyclopedia. 23 January 2004.
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