Adventures Among Masterpieces : Fifteen Literary Memoirs/V.S. Naravane. Allahabad, V.S. Naravane, 2002, xii, 308 p., $17.

Contents: Preface. 1. Sophocles : Antigone. 2. Kalidasa : Meghaduta (‘cloud messenger’). 3. Jayadeva : Gitagovindam (‘the song of Govinda’). 4. Ghalib : selected couplets. 5. Tagore : four plays. 6. Turgenev : on the eve. 7. Tolstoy : two plays. 8. Goethe : Wilhelm Meister. 9. Wordsworth : Tintern Abbey. 10. Keats : ode to a nightingale. 11. Flaubert : Salammbo. 12. Stendhal : the charterhouse of Parma. 13. Anatole France : at the sign of the Reine Pedaugue. 14. Umar Khayyam : selected quatrains. 15. Rumi : four parables. Biographical sketches. Glossary. Index.

"In this book of literary memoirs the author writes about some of the masterpieces of literature which he has loved and cherished over a period of many decades : books that have influenced his own thoughts and feelings. In these memoirs, written in an intimate personal style with occasional digressions, anecdotes, cross-references and philosophical comments, the author recounts his adventures in the world of literature. The selection covers all the three main literary genres : poetry, fiction and drama. The author has chosen for these memoirs books written in nine languages : Sanskrit, Greek, Bengali, Urdu, Persian, Russian, German, French and English. As his approach is not academic or research-oriented, the author calls these literary excursions ‘memoirs’ rather than ‘essays’ or ‘studies’." (jacket)

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