Who Is Arun Joshi's Existentialism?

His untimely death in 1993 brought a culmination to his literary career. Three of his novels The Foreigner (1968), The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), and The Apprentice (1974) were published before 1980. Then came his Sahitya Akademi Award winning novel The Last Labyrinth (1981) and finally the last The City and the River (1990). The major themes that run through all of Joshi’s novels are the themes of alienation and involvement, East-West encounter and compromise, love and hate, quest and complacence, and existentialism and materialism (Kumar, 18).
There are a number of literary influences that have come into the making of Arun Joshi- a modern era novelist. A marked influence of the existentialist thinkers was very apparent on Joshi and his novels. He was very much

The Apprentice is also narrated in a confessional tone. Rathor uses this mode to express his dilemma and the social reality. In a retrospective style, he narrates his journey from innocence to experience. He, very passionately, picturises every minor and major incident that brought his downfall. Rathor makes an honest confession, without hiding or manoeuvring any detail that would reflect his hypocrisy, treachery, debauchery and finally degeneration. Rathor narrates his life-story to a young college student from the hilly areas of Punjab. Rathor hadn’t confessed his guilt to anybody else earlier, but he feels an inclination to narrate everything to this boy. He says that the young boy reminds him of his father who was similarly “grave and clear-eyed” (Joshi, 7). Ratan’s father’s sacrifice had made an indelible impression on Ratan’s psyche. So it seems that he is making his honest confession, actually, to his father’s image; his father being the only epitome of sincerity and selflessness, in his life (Sharma