Obituary: Raja Rao

Raja Rao, 97, was a novelist who helped create the English literature of 20th-century India. Raja Rao's works include Kanthapura, which explores turbulence in a South Indian village, and the semi-autobiographical The Serpent and the Rope.

Raja Rao was born in 1908, in the Indian town of Hassan. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Madras, where he studied English, in 1929. He continued his studies in France, first at the University of Montpellier and later at the Sorbonne.

In 1966, Raja Rao joined the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin, where he taught Indian philosophy.