To some schools of Indian religion the cat has a metaphorical significance. There are two theories of Grace: In the first, man's responsibility is to cling to God as a baby monkey clings to its mother in flight. In the second, man depends wholly upon God for his protection and progress, as a kitten depends upon its mother to carry it about by the scruff of its neck.

Raja Rao has used this latter metaphor as a point of departure for his third novel…. The Cat and Shakespeare is a tender and deceptively humorous story of a South Indian ration-office clerk called Govindan Nair, narrated by his friend Ramakrishna Pai. Raja Rao calls his book "a metaphysical comedy," and indeed his pungent and thoroughly delightful observations of South Indian middle-class life provide a counterpoint to a sometimes difficult allegory. (p. 27)

Raja Rao's book is itself a little like a cat. It has grace and beauty, dignity and a sense of humor, a certain mystery, and even a quality of insubstantiality. Its meaning comes to you of its own accord, and cannot be coaxed or wheedled. You reach out toward it, and it turns its back and stalks unconcernedly away, or even, with a Cheshire grin, fades into nothingness. Sometimes, too, for no apparent reason, it leaps stiff-legged into the air and charges up the draperies. (pp. 27-8)

The book requires multiple readings; one is not enough to follow the thought and at the same time to obtain a sufficient reward from Raja Rao's graceful and austere English and his striking and witty imagery. Only after one is able to relax a little can he give in to the charm of the picture of Ramakrishna Pai "sitting and listening to himself like a lizard," or be caught up by the image, rather than the meaning, of kittens walking sure-footedly along a garden wall between reality and unreality. Only then does one have time to reflect on the sub-themes, guilt and responsibility, causation and existence, which crowd in almost unobtrusively.

Raja Rao has given us a beautiful book. The "Shakespeare" of the title (though Shakespeare was a "natural man") may be somewhat gratuitous; it does however add the quality of a mantra, a truth-containing spell that has the power, in its sound perhaps more than in its lexical meaning, to reach beyond the mind to understanding. (p. 28)