Death of an Elephant

About the Book

Death of an Elephant is an allegory of existence. Pran Dubey, a professor failed by avowed social institutions, is a conflicted man torn apart by his strife and Diaspora neurosis in the ambiguities of past and present, tradition and modernity, and life and death. Human incompleteness and life’s absurdities—hope and despair trapped in the paradox of pain and pleasure—are dramatized through an Eastern soul with a Western mind and a pen dipped in the ink of reflecti ve reality. Death of an Elephant is a harbinger of the neo existential genre.

Brij Mohan entices the curiosity of his book with the piquant title, Death of an Elephant....[It] is really boundless in scope and meaning and of having significance for all who read it....Mohan plumbs the lives of his characters beyond the academic dimensions. They are human beings caught in the web of life and who struggle to extricate themselves with honor from their problems.

I only exist, but I want to live...I was back where I began: A basterdized Shangri-La in search of a lost identi ty...You can run away from your past but the past will never run away from you.... The man in gray flannel suit has disappeared from our comity.... I wasn’t born an American; I became one. I love history.... I love truth even more.... Academia, by and large, looks like a gigantic machine designed to commoditize education for unprincipled success.

About the Author

The author, most recently of Society and Social Justi ce (2012), Development, Poverty of Culture and Social Policy (2011) and Fallacies of Development (2007), is Dean Emeritus at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. His debut novella marks a new milestone in a distinguished academic career that spans over half a century.