Since the beginning of his writing career and onwards, Rao's contribution to the scenery of Indian fiction in English has suffered from inconstant and mixed appraisal. Despite receiving some prestigious literary awards and numerous literary reviews of his novels in France, America, India, and England, he has only intermittently been welcomed by critics across the world, as for instance C.D. Narasimhaiah and Paul Sharrad. Furthermore, only a few monographs have been dedicated to his work so far, the number of which reduces to about a dozen. This chapter examines the major critical responses to Rao's work, especially with regard to the quest for identity while suggesting a way for future critical investigations.

Paradoxically, one of the main limitations of critical orthodoxy on Raja Rao has been the continuous attempt at discrediting the writer's constructions of ‘Indianness’ in his fiction. A conspicuous number of critics have pointed the finger at Rao's deliberate exile in foreign countries, attributing his spatio-temporal isolation to a presumed proportionate aloofness from ‘genuine’ Indian culture. Some others have instead placed emphasis on a nostalgic response often informing the works of expatriate authors. This second stance is, for obvious reasons, the nearest to my perspective although I will also expose its limitations.