The City and The River: an Anecdote of the Crisis Period

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to highlight the issues of discrimination, corruption, exploitation, victimization as depicted by Arun Joshi in the novel, Joshi. It is a political satire where he used parable as a fictional mode. It is an assessment of the political situation of the times. The occasions and events depicted in the novel are evocative of the days of the Emergency of 1974-75 in India. Joshi is a story of time, set in a more extensive background, utilizing an aesthetically fulfilling blend of prediction and fantasy. Though Arun Joshi takes up his favorite existential issues in the novel, he also sees them through the spectacles of politics and thereby elevates the novel, Joshi to the level of political – allegorical satire. The events that took part within the city at a specific point in history.