The Life and Works of Ruskin Bond

Meena Khorana

May 2003 · Greenwood Publishing Group

About this ebook

Ruskin Bond is known internationally as one of India's most prolific writers in English for children, young adults, and adults. This literary biography analyzes the impact of personal, social, geographical, political, and literary influences on Bond's worldview, aesthetic principles, and writings. Connecting the development of Bond's writing career over the past 50 years to the evolution of the publishing industry in India, Khorana details the author's pioneering work in the field of children's and young adult literature, and his contribution to diasporic and postcolonial/post-independence literatures. She concludes that it is Bond's versatile, original, and elegant writing in a variety of genres that continue to endear him to readers around the world.

According to the author, despite Bond's British background, he does not write about India from a Eurocentric perspective. Having lived the majority of his life in India, he knows the country as an insider, writing with an authenticity and emotional engagement about the land and the people of the Himalayas and small-town India. Khorana analyzes his novels and short stores, and highlights his juxtaposition of his protagonists' individual dramas against larger social, moral, and metaphysical issues. In addition, she reveals how the autobiographical and regional elements in Bond's work provide insight into universal themes such as the tension between past and present, city life versus rural values, the dignity of ordinary folk, preservation of the environment, and living in harmony with nature.

Ratings and reviews

Meena Khorana's book (or at least, the preview offered by Google) was very useful to me while I was writing a project on Ruskin Bond. She has captured the beauty of his childhood days in a style not very unlike his own. With excepts form his own books and interviews, delightful narrations of anecdotes and many incidences that took place in his life, this book was a pleasure to read. Thanks a lot.

this is a really good thing!!!!!!

About the author

MEENA G. KHORANA is Professor of English at Morgan State University. She is the author of The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood, 1991) and Africa in Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood, 1994).