Five decades of consistent and dedicated engagement with literature (teaching, critical studies, transcreations and problems of ELT) has resulted in a complex compendium that has something to offer to the specialist in literature and ELT professional as well as general enthusiasts. The work mirrors the manifold aspects of literature and brings into focus, issues of perennial significance to the academic community from a predominantly literary perspective. A casual glance at the index suffices to convince the reader of the range and profundity of the author's scholarship.

The Golden Bouquet, by S S Prabhakar Rao— an anthology including essays and translations—offers an assortment of critical evaluations of the works of writers such as Orwell, Steinbeck, Raja Rao, Chinua Achebe and Saul Bellow. The anthology is divided into eight sections: Critical Studies; English Language Teaching and Linguistics; Contribution to Telugu Studies; Travelogue; Profiles; Introductions/Forewords; Translations/Transcreations; Reviews on and by S S Prabhakar Rao. Considering the nature and diversity of the subjects, such a grouping facilitates easy reading and reference.

The introductory paper, "George Orwell and the Problem of Power", discusses Orwell's "investigations into the cult of power" as revealed in his novels and concludes that Orwell's remedy for the "soul-sullying cult of power" lay more or less in the cultivation of a religious attitude. The paper on Jewish-American writer Herbert Gold deals with the "metaphysics of failure" in his works. Gold is known for his sensitive portrayal of the "agony of dispossession"— a disconcerting feature of the modern world. This section also includes an analysis of the poetry of O P Bhatnagar and a stylistic interpretation of Khushwant Singh's A Train to Pakistan. In his study on the fictional technique in Saul Bellow's The Bellarosa Connection, the author points out that microfiction/novella, with its compactness and directness, helped Bellow to evoke with a good deal of intensity, the `congestion of modern consciousness.