Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja belongs to the genre of realistic novel. This genre was popularized in France by novelists like Emile Zola and Andre Gide in 19th century. The roots of the novel lie in Romances which were popular in Europe for many centuries. Romances dealt with usually love stories, where courtship and adventure assumed great importance. In spite of their popularity for centuries, they fell out of public favour in course of time. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a parody of Romances. Realism became popular in the 19th century France and novelists instead of fantasizing human relationships and making them unreal, depit human life in very realistic terms without glorifying any emotion. Thus creativity assumed a new meaning; it no longer meant weaving fantastic yarns but presenting effectively the day-to-day realities in more realistic terms. Today we have different kinds of realism like socialist realism and magic realism. In...