Bhambar, S: Spirituality Across Cultures

The theme of spiritual quest has been a sort of challenge to the great literary minds of the World. The novels under discussion have been selected with certain considerations: the representation of the broad global scenario, the representation of the master minds engaged in fiction-belonging to 20th century, the representation of different cultures belonging to the East and the West and the representation of different literary traditions and faiths of the World. In this context, the novels selected are Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Journey to Ithaca by Anita Desai, and Bardana by Prakash Deshpande. One of the significant features of this selection is that the novels present a combination of spiritual concepts from the East and the West. It is a modest attempt to know how the great 20th century minds have perceived the theme of spiritual quest in their own ways. It‘s an attempt to know how these authors irrespective of the differences among them have perceived the spiritual reality, since it‘s a human response to the elements of the universe