Arun Joshi’s The Foreigner : A probe into human psyche

Pages:4-5
Mahesh Kumar and Rakesh Pathak (Department of English, Singhania University Pacheri Beri, Jhunjunu, Rajasthan)

Arun Joshi represents the younger generation of Indo English novelists. The writings of Joshi turn inward rather than outward in their analysis of persons, places and things. There is an indubitably existential approach manifest in them. A few of the famous and popular novels written by Joshi are The Foreigner, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, The Apprentice, and The Last Labyrinth. His main concerns in them appear to be : hypocrisy, bribery, falsehood, drunkenness, womanizing, unjust distribution of money and the problem of adjustment in a culturally degraded and dehumanized society. The protagonists in his novels, who are all males, are bitten deep down in their hearts and look completely disconsolate and dispirited in an unwholesome world around them. In The Foreigner, we have Sindi Oberoi, who belongs to no place and to none, reminding us of Yank in O’Neil’s play The Hairy Ape.