Last Labyrinth Arun Joshi

ARUN JOSHI (1939-1993), son of a botanist and an eminent educationist, was born in Varanasi and educated in India and the U.S. After getting his Masters degree in Industrial Management from M.I.T., he returned to India to pursue a career in the corporate world.

Yet writing remained his passion. In the five novels he wrote he spun out some of the most thought-provoking and outstanding fiction written in the twentieth century Indian literature and firmly established his credentials as a writer of rare talent and sensitivity. ‘I seek a belief and a faith beyond psychology’, he said. His search was essentially spiritual. He explored lives as labyrinth — hopeless mazes where one may get irretrievably lost or discover the shining secret at the core of life.

Although English remained his ‘own first language’ he was equally an admirer of Hindi poetry of Dinkar, Ageya, Sumitranandan Pant and Nirala. The Last Labyrinth won him the Sahitya Akademi Award, India’s highest literary honour in 1982.


‘The Last Labyrinth is considered an outstanding contribution to Indian English literature for its restless search for a meaning in human existence, its treatment of the multiple levels of reality, challenging narrative technique and an evocative use of language.’
Sahitya Akademi Award Citation