KRISHNA FLUTING

by John Berry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1959

The winner of the Macmillan Fiction Contest will prove a baffler to many readers and sheer enchantment to others. Perhaps one way to indicate its special quality is to suggest a blend of South Wind with Green Mansions and to place the tale in a mountain area of India in the lower reaches of the Himalayas. The story is an exotic one, with conflicts providing the paramount issues:- the conflicts of mixed races, in Peter Arjuna Bruff, the hero, Philadelphia Quaker plus Hindu, constantly seeking to rationalize the two; Jim Chen, Chinese-American, with a permanent chip on the shoulder; the conflicts of passion, as three women vie for the love of the uncertain Peter- his Quaker cousin, Irene, the high caste Hindu, Indira, and the vicious Liliu, a Tibetan for whom Peter had made himself responsible. There are conflicts too between the white residents in passage and the natives, worshipping Krishna, the fluting god, at odds with the minor gods and with the God of the white people. It is a strange and tortured book, in which the minor thread of plot is symbolic, as Peter and sundry other transient visitors are expected to hunt down and destroy the man-eating python that threatens the village. The central plot, with all its convolutions, the characters, unforgettable in their contradictions, the lush quality of the jungle and mountain backgrounds add up to an unusual book, which somehow never quite rises in total effect above the over-writing and the fuzziness of the philosophical interludes. But it is not a book to ignore- nor an author to overlook.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1959

Categories: FICTION