Indian writer of English-language novels and short stories.

Descended from a distinguished Brahman family in southern India, Rao studied (B.A., 1929) at Nizam College, Hyderabad, and then left India for France to study literature and history at the University of Montpellier and the Sorbonne. His first novel, Kanthapura (1938), dealt with the Indian independence movement. After returning to India in 1939, he spent the war years editing a journal and engaging in underground activities against the British. After World War II he alternated between India and France before finally joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966; he became professor emeritus there in 1980.

Rao's second novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960), considered his masterpiece, is a philosophical and somewhat abstract account of a young intellectual Brahman and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India, France, and England; it plays on the dialogue between Orient and Occident. His other novels are the allegorical The Cat and Shakespeare: A Tale of India (1965); Comrade Kirillov (1976), an examination of communism; and The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988), which is peopled by characters from various cultures seeking their identities. Rao's short stories were collected in The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories (1947) and The Policeman and the Rose (1978). He also wrote The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1998).