Synopsis These three essays on the semiotics of love, life and death in Rilke, Kafka and Manto by Dr. Rosy Singh present the discourse analyses of very diverse discursive formations. Beginning with the mundane socio-cultural contexts fixed in specific time and space of historical dialectics, these writers of east and west have transcended the empirical realities, without however ignoring their basic contradictions, to arrive at the universal human truths. Dr. Singh has demonstrated that a literary critic can neither impose the preconceived notions of narrative structures nor the ideological constructs of any movement, progressive or otherwise. It is at the plane of human dignity and freedom that writers like Rilke, Kafka and Manto meet across cultures and across historical spectrum to reflect and meditate on the predicament of human condition.