City in the novels of Amit Chaudhuri

Pages: 736-739
Salonia Bishnoi (Department of English, Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Haryana)

The purpose of the present paper is the study of City as the thematic background in the novels of the Chaudhuri. He can be termed as a revolutionary writer. He dresses his thoughts very conservatively. His hesitant delivery to his innate thoughts is of one who weighs each word carefully before committing it to speech. He uses his language very cautiously. His four novels- A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song and A New World-are slim and sensitive. The author, from the core of his heart wanted to become a poet. Yet it is fiction that has brought him worldwide name and fame. But there is another aspect to the man revealed in his latest two works both of which are non-fiction. The first is a work of literary criticism which reveals him to be a fiercely intelligent and non-conformist critic. The other is a collection of political essays where he comes across as passionate, committed and outspoken. The word “City” has been drawn from civitas city-state, which is probably a synonym of cives citizens. To be precise, City is a society of individuals who donate to an ideal of rational order. Thus it is physical as well as ideational. The physical city is a mere mirror image of the ideal, and the actual societies and institutions are imperfect pictures of it. The city, for the moderns, is seen as descending in values.