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R. K. Narayan

R. k. narayan’s biography, early writing, first novel.

For instance, it was the first work in which Narayan set his story in the fictive town of Malgudi.

Local paper

Publication of first novel, narayan’s rising success.

After the first book, Greene began to counsel Narayan about how to write to gain the attention of the English audience. He also advised him to shorten his name according to the demand of English readers.

Effect of Depression

Busy career, beginning of mythological career, end of career.

Furthermore, in 1980, Narayan became a part of the Indian parliament and served in education for 6 years. From this time till death, he wrote abundantly. His final book was “Grandmother’s Tale”, a novella based upon Narayan’s childhood recollection of his grandmother’s tale about his great-grandmother.

R. K. Narayan’s Writing Style

Natural and unpretentious, compassionate representations, depiction of true indian society, short stories style, descriptive and objective style.

This gives the narrative a realistic and genuine representation. His work has a unique capability to intertwine actions and characters through his attitude towards the ways of life.

Themes in R. K. Narayan’s Writings

Misery and suffering of man, animal sympathy.

In his works, Narayan exhibits the intricacies of animal life and shows his understanding of their emotions in beautifully created stories.

Children Innocence and Mischiefs

Unemployment issues.

This condition can be related to most of the modern men in the growing competitive world.

Achievements

Works of r. k. narayan.

R. K. Narayan Biography

Birthday: October 10 , 1906 ( Libra )

Born In: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

R. K. Narayan is considered as one of leading figures of early Indian literature in English. He is the one who made India accessible to the people in foreign countries—he gave unfamiliar people a window to peep into Indian culture and sensibilities. His simple and modest writing style is often compared to that of the great American author William Faulkner. Narayan came from a humble south Indian background where he was consistently encouraged to involve himself into literature. Which is why, after finishing his graduation, he decided to stay at home and write. His work involves novels like: ‘The Guide’, ‘The Financial Man’, ‘Mr. Sampath’, ‘The Dark Room’, ‘The English Teacher’, ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’, etc. Although Narayan’s contribution to the Indian literature is beyond description and the way he grabbed foreign audience’s attention for Indian literature is commendable too but he will always be remembered for the invention of Malgudi, a semi-urban fictional town in southern India where most of his stories were set. Narayan won numerous accolades for his literary work: Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Bhushan, AC Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature, honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts and Literature, Padma Vibhushan, etc.

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Indian Celebrities Born In October

Also Known As: Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami

Died At Age: 94

Born Country: India

Quotes By R. K. Narayan Novelists

Died on: May 13 , 2001

place of death: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Notable Alumni: Maharaja's College, Mysore

City: Chennai, India

education: Maharaja's College, Mysore

awards: Sahitya Akademi Award (1958) Padma Bhushan (1964) AC Benson Medal by the British Royal Society of Literature (1980) Padma Vibhushan (2001)

You wanted to know

What are some key themes in r. k. narayan's works.

Some key themes in R. K. Narayan's works include the clash between tradition and modernity, the complexities of human relationships, the struggles of ordinary individuals in a changing society, and the significance of everyday life and experiences.

What is the significance of Malgudi in R. K. Narayan's writings?

Malgudi serves as a fictional town created by R. K. Narayan as the setting for many of his novels and short stories. It represents a microcosm of Indian society, allowing Narayan to explore universal themes through the lives of its diverse inhabitants.

How did R. K. Narayan's writing style contribute to the popularity of his works?

R. K. Narayan's writing style, characterized by its simplicity, humor, and vivid portrayal of everyday life, resonated with readers from various backgrounds. His storytelling ability and authentic depiction of Indian culture drew widespread acclaim and contributed to the enduring popularity of his works.

What role did humor play in R. K. Narayan's storytelling?

Humor was a significant element in R. K. Narayan's storytelling, often used to highlight the idiosyncrasies of human behavior and society. His witty observations and satirical tone added depth to his narratives, making his works both entertaining and thought-provoking.

How did R. K. Narayan contribute to the development of Indian literature in English?

R. K. Narayan is regarded as a pioneering figure in Indian literature in English for his authentic portrayal of Indian life and culture. By capturing the nuances of everyday experiences and the complexities of human relationships, he helped establish a distinct voice for Indian writers in the global literary landscape.

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Narayan was known for his simple and unassuming lifestyle, often wearing a traditional Indian dhoti and kurta.

Despite being a prolific writer, Narayan did not have a formal education in literature or creative writing. He learned English on his own and started writing stories at a young age.

Narayan was a keen observer of human behavior and often drew inspiration for his characters and stories from the people he encountered in his hometown of Malgudi.

He had a great sense of humor and often infused his writing with wit and satire, making his stories both engaging and thought-provoking.

Narayan was a disciplined writer, following a strict routine of writing every morning and revising his work in the afternoons. This dedication to his craft contributed to his success as a renowned author.

Quotes By R. K. Narayan | Quote Of The Day | Top 100 Quotes

See the events in life of R. K. Narayan in Chronological Order

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R.K. Narayan (born October 10, 1906, Madras [Chennai], India—died May 13, 2001, Madras) was one of the finest Indian authors of his generation writing in English.

Reared by his grandmother, Narayan completed his education in 1930 and briefly worked as a teacher before deciding to devote himself to writing. His first novel , Swami and Friends (1935), is an episodic narrative recounting the adventures of a group of schoolboys. That book and much of Narayan’s later works are set in the fictitious South Indian town of Malgudi. Narayan typically portrays the peculiarities of human relationships and the ironies of Indian daily life, in which modern urban existence clashes with ancient tradition. His style is graceful, marked by genial humour, elegance, and simplicity.

Among the best-received of Narayan’s 34 novels are The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), and A Tiger for Malgudi (1983). Narayan also wrote a number of short stories; collections include Lawley Road (1956), A Horse and Two Goats and Other Stories (1970), Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985), and The Grandmother’s Tale (1993). In addition to works of nonfiction (chiefly memoirs), he also published shortened modern prose versions of two Indian epics, The Ramayana (1972) and The Mahabharata (1978).

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R K Narayan Biography

Biography of R K Narayan

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (RK Narayan) was a well-known Indian writer famous for his set of work and writing in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was one of the leading and famous authors of early Indian literature written in English along with two others, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.

Narayan's greatest achievement was to make India accessible to the outside world through his writing and powerful words in his literature. Narayan's biography is always centered on his friendship with Graham Greene. Because he was Narayan's mentor and close friend. He was actively involved in identifying and getting publishers for Narayan's first four books.

In 1941, he founded his own publishing house and his works quickly found a permanent and favorite place in the bookshelves of almost all the Indian homes. When he was at the peak of his fame in his successful career, Narayan was then awarded a Padma Bhushan in 1964 and 36 years later, just a year before his death at 94, another prestigious Padma Vibhushan award in 2000. Narayan was critically ill and hospitalized with cardiovascular problems two weeks ago in Madras, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where he was born in 1906.

Early Life

Narayan was born in 1906 in Madras (now renamed and known as Chennai, Tamil Nadu), British India into a normal Hindu family. He was one of eight children his parents have had and Narayan was second among the sons; his younger brother Ramachandran was an editor at Gemini Studios, and the youngest brother Laxman was a successful cartoonist.

Narayan spent the early years of his life in Madras in the care of his grandmother and a maternal uncle and joined his parents mainly only during the vacations. At that time, India was still treated as the most important of the British empire, a colony held since 1857.

RK Narayan attended a number of schools than a usual student would as in Madras while living with his grandmother, in which the main school was the Lutheran Mission School in Purasawalkam, C.R.C. High School, and Christian College High School. Narayan was an ardent and passionate reader who grew up reading Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Thomas Hardy.

After completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination unfortunately but got to have lots of time to spend a year at home reading and writing; and then he successfully passed the final examination in 1926 and joined Maharaja College of Mysore.

RK Narayan was always found devoted and dedicated to reading whenever he got time.

Awards and Honors

Among the best works of RK Narayan among his 34 novels, The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), and A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) were the best.

His novel The Guide (1958) won him the most prestigious National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, which was his country's highest honor. Narayan received many other awards and honors including the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the Padma Vibhushan, and the Padma Bhushan, India's second and third highest civilian awards, and in 1994 the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honor of India's national academy of letters. He was also once nominated to the Rajya Sabha, which is the upper house of India's parliament.

To know more about RK Narayanan, log into Vedantu and find out what the experts have to say about this legend. His creations have made him an immortal figure in Indian literature that every booklover, irrespective of age, admires.

FAQs on R K Narayan Biography

1. Who is RK Narayan?

RK Narayan was one of the most important English-language Indian fiction authors. He is widely regarded as one of India's best novelists. He created a realistic and immersive experience for his audience by bringing small-town India to them.

2. When and Where Was RK Narayan Born?

RK Narayan was born on 10 October 1906 in Madras (Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India into an Iyer Vadama Brahmin family.

3. Which Was the First Book Published by RK Narayan?

Swami and Friends was RK Narayan's first book, published in 1930. The novel was based on several incidents from his own childhood and was semi-autobiographical. It is still one of the most recommended English readers in Indian schools.

4. What is the difference between Biography and Autobiography?

A biography is often written on account of a person's whole life, which will be framed and written by someone else. On the other hand, an autobiography is also written on account of a person's life but will be written by that person himself from his own point of view. Vedantu's website has been designed to help you find both biographical and autobiographical information in many different formats through online libraries. You can refer to the material and learn about all the great people who have marked their names in history with the help of Vedantu at the comfort of your home.

5. What are the types of Biography?

There are four classic and informative types of biographies they are historical fiction, academic, fictional academic, and prophetic biography. A historical fiction type of biography is a creative account inspired by the events of a person’s life. Academic biographies are based on documented facts and noted accomplishments of a person’s life. A fictional academic biography often tries to combine the best and interesting elements of the fictional biography (entertainment with a strong theme and storyline) and the academic biography (with factual accuracy as well). And a prophetic biography begins with retelling the regular academic approach of considering all the known facts which have been already framed.

6. Why is reading a biography really important?

Biographies help us gain insight and deep knowledge into how successful people handle crises and solve complex problems in their times. They will gradually invite us into people's lives, allowing us to observe them as they battle with challenges and make important decisions at right time. This ultimately helps the reader to greater understanding and better decision making in their own lives. Not all individuals are the same everyone has their own experience and knowledge but biographies of great people who have achieved a lot can always guide you on the right path.

7. How do students benefit from reading biographies?

Biographies help students understand the history and life experiences through another person's perspective, which may encourage them to ask more questions and learn even more. Biographies often serve as a starting point for learning more about a passion at an early age which helps them in choosing their career. Basically, while reading a biography or an autobiography, you get to learn about what an individual has been through, and more often their life experiences at every stage. Since it is believed that human life and psychology are in similarity you can easily relate with those individuals and put yourself in their shoes to understand the experience better.

8. Does reading History help us in our daily life?

Knowing the past is extremely important for any society and human being to know what has happened in their past and which person has invented or created memorable and historic moments. Past gives us insights into our evolving behavior and basic character in matters of life, love, mutuality, war, diplomacy, and peace. It provides insights in-depth understanding into the processes and events of the past and interconnects them with our current life. History serves as a Warning to avoid any mistakes that have been done in the past and gives us a second chance to live our lives even better in our present.

R. K. Narayan Biography

R. K. Narayan, a prominent figure in early Indian literature in English, is renowned for his ability to make Indian culture and sensibilities accessible to foreign audiences. With a writing style often compared to that of William Faulkner, Narayan’s humble background and passion for literature led him to stay at home and write after completing his education. His notable works include novels such as ‘The Guide’, ‘The Financial Man’, and ‘The English Teacher’. However, Narayan’s most enduring legacy lies in the creation of Malgudi, a semi-urban fictional town in southern India that served as the backdrop for many of his stories. His contributions to Indian literature have earned him numerous accolades, including the Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Vibhushan.

Quick Facts

Indian Celebrities Born In October Also Known As: Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami
Died At Age: 94
Born Country: India
Quotes By R. K. Narayan
Died on: May 13, 2001
Place of death: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Notable Alumni: Maharaja’s College, Mysore
City: Chennai, India
Education: Maharaja’s College, Mysore
Awards: Sahitya Akademi Award (1958) Padma Bhushan (1964) AC Benson Medal by the British Royal Society of Literature (1980) Padma Vibhushan (2001)

Childhood & Early Life

R. K. Narayan was born in Chennai, Indian in 1906 in a working class south Indian family. His father was a school headmaster and because his father had to be frequently transferred for his job, Narayan spent most of his childhood in the loving care of his grandmother, Parvati. It was his grandmother who taught him arithmetic, mythology and Sanskrit. He also attended many different schools in Chennai like, Lutheran Mission School, Christian College High School, etc. He was interested in English literature since he was very young. His reading habit further developed when he moved to Mysore with his family and there his father’s schools library offered him gems of writing from authors like Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Wodehouse, etc. In 1926, he passed the university examination and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. After completing his graduation, Narayan took a job as a school teacher in a local school. Soon after, he realized that he could only be happy in writing fiction, which is why he decided to stay at home and write.

Narayan’s decision of staying at home and writing was supported in every way by his family and in 1930, he wrote his first novel called ‘Swami and Friends’ which was rejected by a lot of publishers. But this book was important in the sense that it was with this that he created the fictional town of Malgudi. After getting married in 1933, Narayan became a reporter for a newspaper called ‘The Justice’ and in the meantime, he sent the manuscript of ‘Swami and Friends’ to his friend at Oxford who in turn showed it to Graham Greene. Greene got the book published. His second novel, ‘The Bachelors of Arts’, was published in 1937,. It was based on his experiences at college. This book was again published by Graham Greene who by now started counseling Narayan on how to write and what to write about to target the English speaking audience. In 1938, Narayan wrote his third novel called ‘The Dark Room’ dealt with the subject of emotional abuse within a marriage and it was warmly received, both by readers and critics. The same year his father expired and he had to accept regular commission by the government. In 1939, his wife’s unfortunate demise left Narayan depressed and disgruntled. But he continued to write and came out with his fourth book called ‘The English Teacher’ which was more autobiographical than any of his prior novels. After this, Narayan authored books like, ‘Mr. Sampath’ (1949), ‘The Financial Expert’ (1951) and ‘Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)’, etc. He wrote ‘The Guide’ in 1956 while he was touring United States. It earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award. In 1961, he wrote his next novel called ‘The Man-Eater of Malgudi’. After finishing this book, he travelled to the United States and Australia. He also gave lectures on Indian literature in Sydney and Melbourne. With his growing success, he also started writing columns for The Hindu and The Atlantic. His first mythological work ‘Gods, Demons and Others’, a collection of short stories was published in 1964. His book was illustrated by his younger brother R. K. Laxman, who was a famous cartoonist. In 1967, he came up with his next novel titled ‘The Vendor of Sweets’. Later, that year Narayan travelled to England, where he received the first of his honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds. Within next few years he started translating Kamba Ramayanam to English—a promise he made to his dying uncle once. Narayan was asked by the government of Karnataka to write a book to promote tourism which he republished in 1980 with the title of ‘The Emerald Route’. In the same year he was named as the honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1980, Narayan was chosen as the member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament and throughout his 6 years term he focused on the education system and how little children suffer in it. During the 1980s Narayan wrote prolifically. His works during this peiod include: ‘Malgudi Days’ (1982), ‘Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories’, ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’ (1983), ‘Talkative Man’ (1986) and ‘A Writer’s Nightmare’ (1987). In 1990s, his published works include: ‘The World of Nagaraj (1990)’, ‘Grandmother’s Tale (1992)’, ‘The Grandmother’s Tale and Other Stories (1994)’, etc.

Personal Life & Legacy

In 1933, Narayan met his future wife Rajam, a 15 year old girl, and fell deeply in love with her. They managed to get married despite many astrological and financial hurdles. Rajam died of typhoid in 1939 and left a three year old daughter for Narayan to take care of. Her death caused a great shock in his life and he was left depressed and uprooted for a long period of time. He never remarried in his life. Narayan died in 2001 at the age of 94. He was planning on writing his next novel, a story on a grandfather, just before he expired.

He was very fond of the publisher of The Hindu, N. Ram, and used to spend all his time, towards the end of his life, conversing with him over coffee.
Narayan is regarded as one of the three leading English language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand.

Awards & Achievements

Narayan won numerous accolades for his literary works. These include: Sahitya Akademi Award (1958), Padma Bhushan (1964), AC Benson Medal by the British Royal Society of Literature (1980), and Padma Vibhushan (2001).

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R. K. Narayan (1906-2001)

When R. K. Narayan died on 13 May 2001 at the age of ninety-four, he left behind a body of work that will continue to impress generations of readers. Surveying Narayan's work, one is struck by the breadth and depth of his achievement. His first novel, Swami and Friends: A Novel of Malgudi , was published in 1935, and at the time of his death almost sixty-six years later, Narayan was still writing. In between, he had published novels, short stories, travel books, essays, and retellings of Indian epics, not to mention the articles he had produced as a journalist in his early years. From the 1930s to the early 1990s, when old age finally slowed him down, he managed to write at least three books every decade.

Chronologically, Narayan's fiction takes up the major events of Indian history, including British rule, World War II, the independence movement and the last days of the Raj, Gandhism as a phenomenon, the anxieties and traumas of nation-building, cross-cultural encounters after independence, and ideological debates between tradition and modernity. His characters include schoolboys, college students, teachers, housewives, small tradesmen, lawyers, rogues turned sadhus, taxidermists, dancers, feminists, foreigners in India, and even a tiger who has his own story to tell. Thematically, Narayan deals with such topics as the rites of passage, the education of a young man, a woman's place, death and life, sainthood, destiny and free will, and passivity versus activism. Stylistically, his technique ranges from simple, almost naive, realism to subtle irony. Not averse to using traditional myths and weaving fables into his stories of ordinary people, he is also able to write full-length allegories that manage to be realistic as well and that rely on experiments with narrative perspectives.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan was born on 10 October 1906 in his grandfather's home in Madras, the son of R. V. Krishnaswami Iyer and Gnana Iyer. His father was a schoolteacher in Mysore. Narayan spent the early years of his life in Madras in the care of his grandmother and a maternal uncle, joining his parents mainly during vacations. In My Days: A Memoir (1974), the novelist notes that his grandmother was a major influence on his life and storytelling. The maternal uncle, who published a literary journal in Tamil, also played a part in the growth of the novelist's mind in these years.

Narayan first went to school in Madras. In 1922 he was shifted to the school in Mysore where his father was the headmaster. My Days indicates that Narayan was an indifferent student but an avid reader in his childhood. He failed the school entrance examination twice and also was unable to get through college easily. Eventually he graduated from Maharaja College of Mysore with a B.A. degree in 1930.

Narayan began to write seriously in the 1920s. In R. K. Narayan: The Early Years: 1906-1945 (1996), his biographers Susan Ram and N. Ram describe his intense desire to see his name in print and the hard work he did, not only reading major English writers and periodicals but also going through books on how to sell one's manuscripts. He soon got accustomed to receiving rejection slips from publishers and newspaper editors; however, Narayan continued to harbor hopes of making a living as a writer, until his father persuaded him to take up a teaching position in a school. The experience proved distasteful to him, and he soon resumed corresponding with English publishers for his manuscripts. He eventually succeeded in getting an article on the Indian cinema published in the Madras Mail in July 1930.

In his memoir, Narayan recalls that he was wandering the streets of Mysore one day at this time of his life when Malgudi, the setting of most of his fiction, just seemed to "hurl" into his mind while he was thinking of a name for a railway station for one of his works. Along with the station, he had a vision then of a character called Swaminathan. He thus began his first novel, Swami and Friends , completing it two years later. Meanwhile, he managed to get a short story titled "A Night in a Rest House" published in The Indian Review (August 1932). What was even more satisfying was seeing a short satirical piece that he wrote called "How to Write an Indian Novel" appear in Punch on 27 September 1933.

That year he also fell in love with a fifteen-year-old girl named Rajam Iyer, whom he spotted as she was waiting to fill water in a brass vessel from a street tap. Too shy to approach her, he persuaded his father to send a proposal of marriage to her father. However, their horoscopes did not match as required by religious custom. Not deterred by this obstacle, Narayan had his father find a way around it. He married Rajam on 1 July 1934. Around this time, he also became the Mysore reporter of a newspaper called The Justice.

When Narayan had finished Swami and Friends in 1932, the odds against an Indian publishing English fiction in England were still high. Conscious that his book would not find a publisher in his country and failing to get a positive response from the English publishers to whom he had sent the manuscript, sometime in 1934 Narayan contacted his friend Krishna Raghavendra Putra, who was then studying at Oxford. When Putra at first had no luck getting publishers to respond, Narayan told his friend to throw the manuscript into the Thames. Instead, Putra persuaded the famous English novelist Graham Greene, who was already attempting to get some of Narayan's short stories published in English magazines, to take a look at Swami and Friends . Greene was so impressed that he recommended the book to the publisher Hamish Hamilton. After suggesting a few changes, including the title (originally "Swami, the Tate"), Hamilton agreed to publish the novel. It appeared in October 1935, and Malgudi was launched as a fictional place to be mentioned almost in the same breath as Thomas Hardy's Wessex, William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, or Gabriel García Márquez 's Macondo.

Swami and Friends is a fictional account of Narayan's childhood. Although modeled on Mysore, Malgudi could be any midsize provincial town in the Indian subcontinent progressing through the twentieth century. Swaminathan, the titular character, grows up against the backdrop of colonial rule and the resistance movement that had already gained momentum throughout the subcontinent. His relationships with schoolmates and family members are rendered with great charm and humor in the novel. The deftness with which Narayan presents the mind of a young boy moving toward adolescence and the skill with which the novelist introduces readers to life in a provincial town make the novel noteworthy.

Typical of the few reviews that greeted the novel in England is the comment of the reviewer of the Morning Post (3 December 1935) that Swami and Friends is "a portrait of childhood pure and simple." The review in the Daily Mail (7 November 1935) was in the same vein: the work was "an entirely delightful story about life in an Indian school with equally vivid glimpses of life in Indian homes." But Narayan's biographers point out that although the reviews of the book were almost all favorable, the book was a failure if judged on the basis of its sales and the fact that Hamish Hamilton declined to be Narayan's publisher in the future.

Nevertheless, Narayan was buoyed by the fact that he had published a book in England and by the laudatory reviews. He began work on his second novel, The Bachelor of Arts (1937), as soon as the first one had been accepted for publication. While he was working on it, his wife gave birth to the couple's only child, a girl called Hema, in February 1936. The novel was completed by March of that year. Narayan sent the manuscript to Greene along with a collection of short stories. Greene was once again enthusiastic and found a literary agent for Narayan in the London firm of Pearn, Hollinger, and Higham. The novel was chosen for publication by Thomas Nelson and Sons and came out in March 1937.

The Bachelor of Arts is a fictional rendering of another phase of the writer's life. The protagonist, Chandran, is an undergraduate student in a missionary college. The resistance movement against the British presence seems to have intensified in the novel, and there is a lot of talk about political reforms, much anticolonial rhetoric, and ideas about the future course of Indian history aired by a few of the characters. However, the main focus of the novel is again on the protagonist's emotional growth, this time from adolescence to manhood. In the first part of the novel Chandran's relationships with friends and family members as well as his teachers are presented endearingly. In the middle part of the book Narayan depicts Chandran in love with a girl called Malathi. He feels intensely for her even though he has only seen her from a distance, but he becomes obsessive about her to the point that he clashes with his parents, who initially will not allow him to marry the girl because of her father's social standing. Even after they relent, he comes across another obstacle that he fails to overcome: the horoscopes of Chandran and Malathi do not match, and so the marriage cannot take place. In the final part of the novel, the frustrated Chandran leaves Malgudi and becomes for some time a mendicant, opting for the life of a holy man to assuage his grief. But he eventually realizes that he has made the wrong decision by deserting his family and has been guilty of self-deception in thinking that he could be a holy man. The chastened Chandran returns to his parents and is finally ready to settle down and marry a girl of their choosing.

The Bachelor of Arts was more widely reviewed than Swami and Friends , and the critics were as appreciative of the book as the reviewers of the first novel had been. The novel came with an enthusiastic introduction by Greene, who compared the Indian writer to Anton Chekhov. The combination of favorable reviews and Greene's endorsement meant that the novel did somewhat better in terms of sales than the previous one, but it still fell far short of being a success in the literary marketplace.

Narayan began work on his third novel, The Dark Room (1938), soon after the second was in print. He was able to send the typescript to Greene by October 1937. Greene was once more positive in his response to the book. Because the publishing house of Nelson declined to publish the new work, Narayan's agent had to locate a new publisher for him and found one in Macmillan in 1938.

The Dark Room shows Narayan moving away from autobiographical fiction. It is also unusual in Narayan's canon because it has a female protagonist. The novel has an almost tragic quality as it portrays the unfulfilled life of Savitri, a woman married to an uncaring but rich husband. In My Days , Narayan explains the frame of mind that led him to write The Dark Room:

I was somehow obsessed with a philosophy of woman as opposed to man, her constant oppressor. This must have been an early testament of the "Woman's Lib" movement. Man assigned her a secondary place and kept her there with such subtlety and cunning that she herself began to lose all notion of her independence, her individuality, stature, and strength. A wife in an orthodox milieu of Indian society was an ideal victim of such circumstances. My novel dealt with her, with this philosophy broadly in the background.

Deeply unhappy after fifteen years of married life, and because she finds out that her husband was having an affair with an employee in his office, Savitri decides to drown herself in the river. But a locksmith-thief who takes her to his home prevents her from taking her life. She then finds employment in the village temple, but the priest is a disagreeable character, and she feels totally depressed about staying without her children. In the end, therefore, she returns to her home and to the dark room that Fate seems to have set aside for her so that she could resume the role of Savitri--the Hindu archetype of the long-suffering, all-sacrificing wife.

Like the previous novels, The Dark Room was a success with the English critics when it was published. Typical of the laudatory reviews was John Brophy's comment in the Daily Telegraph (4 November 1938) that it was "a short, poignant, delicately shaped and finished novel . . . entirely convincing and charming in its reticent sympathy." In India, too, most critics praised the novel, as they had his first two books. The critic K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, for example, found it to be a carefully and sensitively done portrait of middle-class South Indian society and compared Savitri to the heroine of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), though he concluded Narayan's presentation of Savitri is not a match for the Norwegian dramatist's portrait of Nora. Some Indian reviewers, however, were critical of Narayan's depiction of an Indian marriage, perhaps because, as his biographers indicate, the theme of the mistreated wife was bold for its period.

This novel did as poorly in terms of sales as the first two. Narayan was thus happy to find a regular outlet for his short fiction in the Madras daily, The Hindu. He also received a commission from the Mysore government to write a book on the state, and he researched extensively to write Mysore (1939), a travel narrative interspersed with historical events. Even though he received little money for this project, it allowed him to know Mysore even more intimately.

In June 1939 Narayan entered the darkest period of his life: five years into his marriage, his wife died after a short illness of what was probably typhoid. Overwhelmed with grief, he stopped writing for a while and withdrew into himself. He finally managed to get out of his depression, partly because he had to look after his daughter, but also because he felt that he had succeeded in renewing contact with Rajam through séance sessions. But although he slowly resumed normal activities, the outbreak of World War II impeded literary activity. Also, because Greene became inaccessible then, owing to his involvement in the war effort, Narayan found paths to publishing doubly difficult.

Narayan managed to sustain himself in this difficult period through his journalism and by giving talks on Madras radio. In 1941 he found a further outlet for his work and another vocation when he became the editor of a journal called Indian Thought. Although the periodical proved to be short-lived, the move was important for Narayan's career because it led him ultimately to publish his works in India through his own imprint, Indian Thought Publications. In the first half of the 1940s, three collections of his short stories as well as Swami and Friends and the travelogue Mysore came out in low-priced editions under this imprint. In the process, Narayan became one of the pioneers in publishing South Asian writing in English.

By 1944 Narayan had finished writing his fourth and most autobiographical novel, The English Teacher (1945). This novel is about Krishna, who teaches English in the missionary college that Chandran had graduated from and who vacillates between writing in English and Tamil. It is also a tale about Krishna's family life and bereavement after the death of his wife. Despite their different protagonists, Swami and Friends , The Bachelor of Arts , and The English Teacher can be read together to present the story of the novelist as a boy, a young man, and an adult. The autobiographical connections can be easily made by anyone who has read Narayan's memoir, My Days , even though Narayan inevitably fictionalized his experiences throughout the novels.

The English Teacher can be divided into two parts. The first half of the novel depicts Krishna's delight in his personal life and the satisfaction he derives from his marriage to Susila and the birth of his daughter. The second half presents his initial sense of shock and overwhelming grief at the sudden death of his wife and his efforts to reconcile himself to her loss by attempting spiritual communion with her. The movement of the novel is from bliss to grief to an affirmation of love that can transcend death. Near the end, the protagonist offers a bleakly cyclical vision of life:

Wife, children, brothers, parents, friends. . . . We come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest the law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life.

However, the novel concludes with Krishna feeling that he had united with Susila in a mystic moment.

Of Narayan's early novels, The English Teacher was easily the most popular. It was widely praised and sold well in England. Writing in the Glasgow Evening News (29 October 1945), Compton Mackenzie declared it to be "an exquisite experience." A review in The Spectator (12 October 1945) found the novel to be "quite out of the ordinary run." It was the first Narayan novel to be published in the United States: Michigan State College Press brought it out as Grateful to Life and Death in 1953. After the success of this work, Narayan found it much easier to get publishers for his works, and his reputation in the West as well as in India began to grow steadily.

The English Teacher closed one phase of Narayan's career, since it is the last of his novels that depended mostly on the writer's life as the chief source of the narrative. In the next phase of his work as a novelist, he broadened his vision to depict individuals from all parts of society and convey the comic aspects of life as well as its tragic, heartrending moments. Having come to terms with the death of his wife and having achieved a measure of financial stability, he settled into a routine of writing, parenting, and taking the occasional trip out of Mysore. He built his own house in 1948 and saw his daughter get married in 1956. That year he was in the United States for an extended period of time and records his travels there in My Dateless Diary: An American Journey (1960). The critic William Walsh quotes Narayan as saying in 1974 that by then his life "had fallen firmly into a professional pattern: books, agents, contracts, and plenty of letter writing" in addition to visiting his daughter and grandchildren, who lived a hundred miles away.

After The English Teacher , Narayan began to draw on his contacts with people in the outside world for his novels. He also attempted to enrich his presentation of individuals, as he had done before with Savitri in The Dark Room , by searching for character archetypes in the Hindu holy books. As he observes in his essay "English in India," reprinted in A Story-Teller's World (1989), it was necessary to look "at the gods, demons, sages, and kings of our mythology and epics, not as some remote concoctions but as types and symbols, possessing psychological validity even when seen against the contemporary background." Narayan was ready to embark on a major fictional phase of his career, in which he went beyond autobiography and combined his experience of people and places with the founding myths of his nation as well as his thoughts about an India coping with the dawning of independence.

Mr. Sampath (1949), the first novel that Narayan wrote after India's independence, combines his knowledge of the motion-picture world (derived from a stint as a scriptwriter in the late 1940s) with his newfound interest in Indian myths. The novel is an ambitious attempt to represent Malgudi in the final years of British rule and to connect it with a mythical period of Indian history, arriving at a complex perspective on successive waves of colonization. The protagonist, Srinivas, is a rather confused but likable journalist who turns to scriptwriting for a movie on the god Shiva, the god's love for Parvithi, and his encounter with Kama, the god of love. But Srinivas's bid to come up with a script that would do justice to the mythical tale fails, apparently because the ancient tales cannot be presented in the contemporary world except in an adulterated form. The quotidian, too, constantly diverts Srinivas from the mythical past. In a vision, Srinivas learns the essential lesson about the perspective to be taken on what was happening in the country: "Dynasties rose and fell. Palaces and mansions appeared and disappeared. The entire country went down under the fire and sword of the invader. . . . But it always had its rebirth and growth." In other words, Indian history existed in a state of flux, and change was inevitable, as was the resilience of India and Indians.

The titular character is an egotistical, domineering, and amoral printer with whom Srinivas has to work to bring out his journal. Sampath is the one who leads Srinivas away from journalism to the movie industry. But Sampath's energy and egotism as well as lack of scruples create a mess that is further complicated by the unstable studio artist Ravi's passion for the actress Shanti, who has an affair with Sampath. In his vitality as well as selfishness, Sampath becomes a forerunner of other Narayan characters who disrupt social life because of their egotism and indifference to others or the norms of society. He thus stands in contrast with Srinivas, who, as the critic A. Hariprasana observes, "realizes that he cannot achieve self-identity in isolation" and learns to value the importance of becoming involved "in the web of human relationships" and of restraint and self-knowledge as precursors to the coming of wisdom.

The Financial Expert (1952), Narayan's next novel, uses Hindu myths creatively. The book is a realistic novel of Malgudi in the 1930s and early 1940s as well as an effective fable. Margayya, its protagonist, has acquired a fortune by publishing a quasi-pornographic book whose rights he had purchased for a paltry sum from the eccentric Dr. Pal, and he continues to raise money through questionable means. But he forgets the injunction of a priest who had cautioned him that one cannot appease Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, and Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, at the same time. Margayya tries to buy his son, Balu, an education by making himself the head of the school board and by neutralizing the fiercest teacher of the school. The result, however, is that Balu ends up a totally spoiled individual, indifferent to education, work, or the wife Margayya chooses for him.

Margayya discovers thus that all his wealth does not bring happiness either to him or to his wife and only corrupts his son. Narayan's point in the novel is a simple but profound one: true riches can never accrue when one makes money into a god or pursues dubious paths to wealth. At the conclusion of the novel, Margayya has lost all the wealth he had acquired from his financial shenanigans, but in the process he has learned that money is not everything. When he had wealth, he lacked enlightenment; when he loses everything he has acquired illicitly, he comes closer to self-knowledge. The novel ends as it begins, with Margayya ready to resume his old profession of adviser to peasants seeking help; but he appears to have learned his lesson and seems ready to start again in life.

The Financial Expert shows Narayan the novelist at his best in the way he handles the central theme of the vanity of human wishes, in his deft manipulation of events and structuring of the events in Margayya's life, and in the portrait of the central character, who is deeply flawed but also all too human and thus capable of retaining the reader's sympathy. The novel is memorable too for the portraits of Dr. Pal, the archetypal confidence man; Meenakshi, Margayya's long-suffering wife; and Balu, his prodigal son. Margayya's rise and fall take place against a backdrop of a world full of poverty, corruption, red tape, and the opportunism displayed by cynical businessmen and officials in wartime India. Narayan manages to be serious and comic throughout the novel; he also alternates details of everyday life in Malgudi with moments when readers get to view the workings of Margayya's mind. The critic William Walsh writes that the novel "has an intricate and silken organization, a scheme of composition holding everything together in a vibrant and balanced union."

Narayan followed The Financial Expert with his most political novel: Waiting for the Mahatma (1955). Written eight years after India's independence and the death of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, this work portrays in considerable detail the years leading to the partition of India. It is something of a postmortem on the roles played by Gandhi and his followers in the independence struggle and the way in which India had become vulnerable afterward because many Indians had not taken Gandhi's message of nonviolence and communal harmony to heart. Sriram, the central character, joins the freedom movement not because of his devotion to Gandhi but because of his passion for the Gandhian activist Bharati. Nevertheless, he becomes involved in almost all the major events leading to Indian independence and even goes to jail for taking part in a terrorist movement aimed at driving the British from India.

Narayan suggests through this novel that the bloodshed and divisiveness that accompanied the partition of India was inevitable, because people driven by personal passions and self-interest had cast the great leader's message aside. In the novel, except for Bharati, no one appears to be in the freedom struggle for love of India or seems inclined to follow Gandhi's teachings faithfully. The consequence is that post-independence India is, if anything, in worse condition than it was when the British had left it, for it has become a land full of religious riots, hunger, and unscrupulous politicians like the unprincipled Jagadish, a former terrorist who is now thriving financially. The novel concludes with Gandhi's assassination, although the great man blesses Sriram's marriage to Bharati before he is shot, suggesting that perhaps the couple will be able to keep Gandhi's spirit alive despite the many who have deviated from his philosophy and idealism.

Perhaps Narayan's most famous novel is his subsequent one, The Guide (1958), a work he wrote while he was in Berkeley, California, during his visit to America in 1958. It is the story of Raju, a scamp who ends up being perceived as a savior by many people. When the novel begins, he has just been released from jail. He wanders into a small town, where he finds Velan, a villager who is soon convinced that he has confronted a holy man and makes himself Raju's disciple. Soon after the meeting, Raju tries to dissuade Velan from hero worship by telling him the story of his life. While Raju relates to Velan his progress--from a wide-eyed child to the owner of a railway stall, a tourist guide, the lover and impresario of the classical dancer Rosie, and finally a jailbird--the narrator punctuates Raju's story by showing his dealings with Velan and the villagers who embrace him as a spiritual guide capable of leading the village out of a drought through a penitential fast. Raju's purpose in telling his story to Velan is to demystify his spiritual powers and to emphasize his shady past. Velan, however, is unmoved by the story and continues to see Raju as a guru. After Raju concludes his narrative, the omniscient narrator takes sole charge of the narration duties. The conclusion shows a Raju who may or may not be at the point of achieving transcendence.

Characteristically, Narayan interlaces the story of Raju with frequent references to Hindu theology. The Guide sets out to compare Raju's progress to that of Devaka, a man from India's legendary past, whose story Raju's mother used to tell him before the child used to doze off, so that he never could come to learn the ending, and so that as an adult, he could only remember that Devaka was "a hero, saint, or something of the kind." Also, Raju's excessive lust for sex and wealth and his taste for a life of luxury are precisely the sins Hindu metaphysical tradition cautions against, because giving in to such desires means forgetting that the world is maya (an illusion) and losing sight of the belief that a man must transcend this world by showing bhakti (true devotion).

The Guide is Narayan's most popular book, partly because of its witty presentation of Raju's character and partly because of its intricate narrative technique of the first-person account of Raju alternating with the omniscient narrator's presentation of the lovable rogue who becomes unwittingly a hero. The novel is also memorable because of its presentation of Rosie, who grows in stature throughout the work: she begins as a bored housewife who enters into an adulterous relationship with Raju, but by the time the novel ends, she has become a classical dancer of repute.

Typical of the praise heaped on the novel and its writer is the comment made by Anthony West in The New Yorker (19 April 1958): " The Guide is the latest, and the best, of R. K. Narayan's enchanting novels about the South Indian town of Malgudi and its people. . . . It is a profound statement of Indian realities." The Guide won India's highest literary prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1960. The novel was also made into a highly popular movie in 1965 that made Narayan even more famous in India. However, he disapproved of the script and distanced himself from it because he felt it had vulgarized his work.

Narayan followed The Guide with another triumph: The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961). It is the story of Nataraj, an amiable and docile printer of Malgudi, who encounters Vasu, a taxidermist from outside the town who takes over Nataraj's attic to use it as a base for his grisly profession. Vasu is brisk, powerfully built, egotistical, and totally indifferent to the community's values. Narayan implies in his narrative that Vasu is a rakshasha, the type of demon who challenged the gods themselves. Nataraj's assistant Sastri, well-versed in Indian myths, even views Vasu as Bhasmasura, the demon of Indian myth who blights everything he touches, defies the heavens, and puts humanity into peril. But Bhasmasura is also an overreacher whose pride results in self-annihilation. In the novel, too, Vasu self-destructs when he inadvertently kills himself while squashing a mosquito that had landed on his forehead.

But The Man-Eater of Malgudi is also the story of its narrator, Nataraj, who is initially a passive character. He prefers to spend his time in the first part of the novel by chatting with his friends but is transformed by his contact with Vasu and the latter's intimidating ways into taking the offensive to contain "the man-eater of Malgudi." Thus, in the concluding parts of the novel Nataraj finds himself acting more like Vasu. He even wonders if in a fit of aggression he had been instrumental in cornering the taxidermist, perhaps thereby forcing himself to self-destruct.

Narayan presents the Vasu-Nataraj relationship against the backdrop of everyday life in Malgudi and a cast of idiosyncratic minor characters. His skill in depicting life in a midsize provincial town of India is evident. The Man-Eater of Malgudi is also a funny novel and reveals Narayan's delight in the human comedy. Narayan's technique in the work is an unobtrusive one as he takes readers from the tranquil opening to the frenzied climax of the story. Like The Guide , this book was received enthusiastically on publication. Donald Barr commented in The New York Times Book Review (12 February 1961): "it is classical art, profound and delicate art, profound in feeling and delicate in control."

Narayan's next novel, The Vendor of Sweets (1967), once again appears to set up tradition against disruptive Western influences. V. S. Naipaul sees the novel as characteristic of Narayan's work because of its theme: "there is a venture into the world of doing, and at the end there is a withdrawal." Tradition and the unchanging Indian world is here represented by Jagan, the vendor of sweets, and modernity by his son Mali, who has come back from America with Grace, a Korean American woman, and innovative business schemes. The novel is set in the 1960s, but Jagan keeps thinking about India's Gandhian past and his role in it as an activist inspired by the Mahatma. Jagan, a traditionalist by instinct, also treasures, paradoxically, mementos of the Raj as well as Indian greats, valuing the works of William Shakespeare as well as those of Rabindranath Tagore.

As Ashok Berry has stressed, Narayan is setting up an opposition between tradition and modernity in a way that will invert "the dominant hierarchy." Thus, the novel concludes with Jagan retreating from the world of Mali and Grace, but he does not forget to take his checkbook with him. Jagan also approves of Grace and is only upset because his son had backed off from his promise to marry her. While Naipaul says that the novel concludes with Jagan's withdrawal from modernity, Berry emphasizes Narayan's complex perspective on the novel when he says that it is "precisely about accommodating imperfection and hybridity. By destabilizing ideas of purity, it paves the way for different conceptions of identity."

Although not as successful as either The Guide or The Man-Eater of Malgudi , The Vendor of Sweets reveals Narayan's gift for characterization, as Jagan is a complex creation: comic, shrewd, and vain but also an idealist and a caring father whose loneliness attracts the reader's compassion. The portrait of Mali and his scheme of marketing a storytelling machine is Narayan's way of satirizing harebrained business ideas and uncritical acceptance of Western values, but Grace is portrayed with sympathy and understanding. The novel, typically, reveals the changing world of Malgudi, where cross-cultural exchanges take place even as the traditional values of the Bhagavad Gita , the Hindu sacred text that is Jagan's constant companion, continue to be a guide for people of his generation.

Narayan's subsequent novel, The Painter of Signs (1976), is one of his most impressive longer works of fiction. It echoes many of Narayan's earlier novels in its themes as well as its structure. The plot--about an obsessive young man, Raman, who pursues Daisy, a woman dedicated to easing overpopulation, the national issue of the 1970s--echoes Waiting for the Mahatma , which was about Sriram's single-minded pursuit of the zealous Gandhian, Bharati. Throughout the novel Raman broods on philosophical as well as topical issues, as did Srinivas of Mr. Sampath . Like Rosie of The Guide , Daisy is a modern woman, not afraid of transgressing conventional notions of morality in pursuit of her vocation. However, Daisy is even more independent minded than Rosie, for in the end she makes a clean break from Raman, something Narayan's earlier women seemed unable or unwilling to do. As Sadhana Allison Puranik points out, such a "radical overturning of convention" indicates that there is a subversive element in Narayan even though it coexists with "his love of traditional elements of Indian life and art." Puranik also stresses the political dimension of the novel and its contemporaneity: connecting Daisy's fanaticism about family planning with Indira Gandhi's excesses in enforcing it in India, Puranik thinks that "Narayan implicitly criticizes the attitude of cultural extremism apparent in the government's domestic policies."

As if to mark the change in Indian mores, the novel is much more explicit about sexuality than Narayan's other longer works of fiction. Also, Narayan seems more reform minded in this novel than in his earlier works. Daisy appears to have no inclination to be like Savitri from The Dark Room , and Narayan shows her leaving conventional notions of womanhood behind altogether. While it is too much to say that Narayan endorses Daisy's independence totally or upholds the ideology of the single woman or family planning unambiguously, the novel accepts her modernity to a great extent and shows her ideas gaining acceptance among quite a few women even when they conflict with other upholders of tradition.

Narayan's twelfth novel, A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), is distinctive in having a protagonist who is a tiger. He is called Raja, and he narrates the story of the spiritual changes he undergoes. In the introduction to the novel, Narayan writes that the idea of adopting such an unusual point of view came to him when he saw a tiger accompanying a sadhu in the Hindu Kumbh Mela, a major Hindu festival. What struck him in particular was that the tiger was not on a leash, and that the holy man accounted for the tiger's freedom by saying "they were brothers in previous lives." This encounter led Narayan to think about the tiger's perspective on life--which, he would have readers believe, evolved not unlike that of human beings. The book presents details of Raja's life as a cub, his brashness as he arrives at his physical peak, his capture and conversion into the star attraction of a circus, his "elevation" into a celebrity after being cast in movie roles, his escape from captivity, and his adoption by an ascetic. This sagacious man's views give Raja insight into life and death, making him appreciate that "separation is the law of life right from the mother's womb" and thus has to be accepted as part of God's plans for all animals. He also accepts the notion that one should free oneself from worldly attachments. Raja ends up in a zoo but appears to have achieved enlightenment and a mature acceptance of life. Because the protagonist is a tiger, the novel often strikes a comic note.

A Tiger for Malgudi was the last of Narayan's novels to receive wide critical attention. But it got mixed reviews, and a few critics recorded their disappointment with it. Writing in The New York Times Book Review (4 September 1983), for example, Noel Perrin noted that the book is "distinctly not drenched with humanity" and that "most of the flavor of Malgudi is missing." Similarly, Carlo Coppola observed in a review in World Literature Today (Spring 1984) that although there are good things in the book, "in the last analysis . . . the novel falls short of Narayan's best achievements (viz., The Financial Expert , The Guide , The Man-Eater of Malgudi ) because the author fails to convince us of the final phase of Raja's quest."

Narayan was eighty years old when he published his next novel, Talkative Man , in 1986. This story is another take on a theme that fascinated him throughout his career as a novelist: the fate of the long-suffering Indian wife. Although Malgudi has changed, the wife of this tale, Sarasa, continues to suffer because of her indifferent and philandering husband, the confidence man Rann, who claims to be working for the United Nations. She is financially independent, but she cannot part from him despite his obtuseness and tendency to abandon her. In her determination to stick to him, she is, in some ways, like Savitri of The Dark Room. The novel is of interest because of the titular character, the talkative man, a persona Narayan has used in many of his short fictions to reveal his delight in raconteurs and their garrulousness, which at times makes them sound comically gullible.

Narayan published his last novel, The World of Nagaraj (1990), four years after Talkative Man . The title character follows a holy man who has renounced the world and is bent on leaving it behind, freeing himself from the world of the senses so that he can concentrate fully on God. Nagaraj, too, appears to be preparing himself for forsaking earthly attachments and welcoming death. Nevertheless, Nagaraj continues to be dragged back into the quotidian because of his spoiled nephew Tim, who has a nose for trouble and involves Nagaraj in his problems. This entanglement makes him unable to renounce the world effectively, putting him in contrast with the mythical sage Narada, who has given up all earthly desires for the benefit of humanity at large.

The last long work of fiction that Narayan published in his lifetime is Grandmother's Tale (1992). It is essentially a novella, but the author himself points out in an explanatory note that it is a work located in "the borderline between fact and fiction, between biography and tale," and between family history and quest narrative. In it Narayan retells his great-grandmother's search for her husband, who had disappeared after telling her "laconically" one day, "I am going away." Re-creating the world of nineteenth-century India, where women were forced to lead much more confined lives than characters such as Sarasa of Talkative Man , this novel shows the triumph of Narayan's great-grandmother's love and the indomitable spirit that led her to her husband and allowed her to end her life happily.

Among Narayan's strengths as a novelist are the economy of his storytelling and the skill with which he manipulates his plot so that events that complicate the lives of his central characters are resolved within a couple hundred pages. Narayan is also a master of shorter forms of fiction, and he brought out five collections of short stories, most of them published first in the Madras newspaper The Hindu . They cover the same territory as the novels; indeed, the first collection was called Malgudi Days (1943). The stories of the early collections are slight pieces and usually reportorial in style, lacking the plotted quality of the novels. Some are anecdotal or no more than character sketches. The stories of the later collections are longer and more intricately built. Usually they show people as fallible, eccentric, or merely amusing. Some are about animals, and some present children and deal with the theme of growing up. Most often Narayan uses the short story to depict ordinary people in everyday situations with a light touch but also in a manner that reminds readers that his mission is to be the chronicler of Indian life. He registers the poverty of Malgudians and occasionally ventures into social criticism. A few of the stories are satirical in tone, and there is even a touch of the absurd in one or two of them. As in the novels, the dominant mood is of mild irony; but the best of them can be funny, as is the case with "A Horse and Two Goats," a hilarious account of cultural misunderstanding.

Narayan's collections of short tales include the volume Gods, Demons, and Others (1964). These stories are, as the title indicates, attempts to re-create Indian myths. They show Narayan adopting the role of the traditional storyteller who regales his audience with tales about a supernatural world that is of interest to mortals and that combines instruction with enjoyment. Narayan evidently enjoyed this role and found that modern audiences delighted in his versions; he thus went on to create his own versions of India's great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata . These volumes, published in 1972 and 1978 respectively, complement the world of Malgudi portrayed in the novels and the short fiction, in which his situations and characters often allude to the Hindu holy books and legends. Patrick Swinden has noted that what Narayan's narrator says about the sage Narada in The World of Nagaraj could also be applied to the author: he "floats with ease from one world to another . . . carrying news and gossip, often causing clashes between gods and demons, demons and demons, and gods and gods, and between the creatures of the earth."

Any survey of Narayan's career should also take note of his miscellaneous writings and essays on literature, for as a practicing journalist as well as an author often invited to present his thoughts on writing and art, he published several collections of nonfictional prose. Essays such as his "Introduction to The Financial Expert, " collected in A Story-Teller's World , and "Misguided Guide," reprinted in A Writer's Nightmare (1988), give readers the contexts of his novels. Essays such as "Mysore City" (in A Story-Teller's World ) furnish them with details that are helpful in understanding the Malgudi setting. They also remind readers how close his novels are to the South Indian world he knew so intimately. Other essays provide information about his views on storytelling, the problems facing the Indian writer, the status of English in India, East-West encounters, and his delight in everyday life and simple events as well as his eye for the oddities of people. His two extended works of nonfiction are his memoir, My Days , and My Dateless Diary , in which he describes his travels in America and encounters with Americans during a nine-month visit sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Narayan received some major awards for his work. In addition to the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide , the Indian government conferred on him the Padma Bhushan, one of India's leading awards, in 1964 for his overall achievement. He was also decorated with the Royal Society's Benson Medal in 1980 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature that year. He was a visiting professor at Michigan State University and Columbia University in the United States. Major Indian universities and the University of Leeds conferred honorary degrees on him.

Narayan died on 13 May 2001. Viewing Narayan's achievement in perspective at the beginning of the twenty-first century, one can see that he has been one of the leading Indian writers in English of the previous century. The first wave of Indians writing in English, comprising men and women such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Raja Rammohon Roy, Michael Modhusudhan Dutt, and Toru Dutt, had little or no impact on English literature. Many of these writers failed in using a language that was not their own and soon switched to their mother tongues. The second generation were the true pioneers: writers such as Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, and Kamala Markandaya managed to attract a limited but devoted following not only in India but also all over the world. A few of them, Chaudhuri and Narayan for instance, even managed to win major literary awards overseas. Significantly, of these writers, Narayan was the only one ever considered for the Nobel Prize in literature. His fame continued to increase decade by decade, and his work continued to be published both in India and the West throughout the twentieth century.

The arrival of the third wave of Indian writers in English with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), a wave that swept forward writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, and Arundhati Roy, did not distract attention from Narayan but rather showed the solidity of his achievement. His peers as well as successors have been quick to acknowledge Narayan's contribution to Indian writing in English. In an essay written at Narayan's death, the distinguished Indian poet Dom Moraes called Narayan "by far the best writer of English fiction that his country has ever produced." Pankaj Mishra, one of the Indian writers in English now making their mark globally, declared in another eulogy that Narayan was "a precursor I could look up to and learn from, and I can't overestimate the importance of this to a young writer working in a tradition that doesn't seem very coherent."

With only Greene's help, but without the flamboyance of Rushdie or the benefit of postcolonial theory, R. K. Narayan carved a niche for himself nationally and internationally. For more than half a century he produced quality work despite writing in a language not his own while staying in India almost all the time. Mishra's New York Review of Books obituary survey can be invoked again to sum up Narayan's achievement: his "unmediated fidelity" to his world and "instinctive understanding of it" make him "a more accurate guide to modern India than the intellectually more ambitious writers of recent years."

write a short biography of rk narayan or william shakespeare

Alam, Fakrul. " R. K. Narayan ." South Asian Writers in English , edited by Fakrul Alam, Gale, 2006.

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R.K. Narayan

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Badal, R.K. R.K. Narayan: A Study (Prakash Book Depot, 1976). Hariprasanna, A. The World of Malgudi, (Prestige, 1994). Pontes, Hilda. R.K. Narayan (Concept, 1983). Ram, Susan, and Ram, N. R.K. Narayan: Early Years 1906–1945 (Penguin, 1996). Sharan, N.N. A Critical Study of the Novels of R.K. Narayan (Classical Pub., 1993).

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R K Narayan

R K Narayan is one of the few novelists of India who enjoyed a career-long fame and honour without any disputes. His reader base as well as his critics, seldom of them you would find hostile towards him or any of his books. Written around 15 novels and several books in other genres, R K Narayan is best remembered for his novels which revolved around and evolved in Malgudi. Malgudi was a hypothetical south Indian town which Narayan developed in his novels and gave it shape as his career furthered.

Born in 1906 in Madras, he was a man of his belief. Nevertheless, he always exposed the unnecessary and no longer relevant practices in Indian society. As a novelist, he was progressive and always tried to provide ‘better than the previous’ things in his novels, and at times, he succeeded as well. His contribution to the Indian English Literature is unparalleled and subsequently, R K Narayan was awarded Padma Bhusshan and Padma Vibhushan award by the Indian government.

His career as a novelist began in 1935 with the publication of his first novel – Swami and Friends. This novel, mostly the critics claim, simply came out because of his memories and narration which involved his personal experiences and thus being an autobiographical novel to some extent. Nevertheless, this novel annunciated his arrival on the horizon of Indian writing in English. His second novel – The Bachelor of Arts, certainly better than his previous one, reinforced his place. This novel tells the story of Chandran, a fresh graduate, who is unable to find stability in his life. As a twist or say for the sake of exposing the ‘traditionally dogmatic practices’ Narayan introduces two love stories in the novel. One fails because of horoscope and another begins with horoscope at the end.

He has written over 15 novels (nearly) but he is remembered and regarded high mainly because of the novels stated below:

The Guide (1958)
Talkative Man (1986)
Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
The English Teacher (1945)
The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961)

His novels exhibited a kind of subtle atmosphere very much apt for the kind of fiction R K Narayan wrote. The presence of dynamic Malgudi in the backdrop added soul to his plots as well his characters were, most of the times, animated and breathing. He wrote about the life of common people and the plight that the had to face every day. Social fabric in his novels was attached and detached according to the demand of the plot. From the theme of love to the theme of independence, he wrote almost every kind of novels. Rightly so, today he is regarded as one of the three pillars of the Indian English fiction.

The place that R K Narayan occupies in Indian English literature is hailed by the critics in India as well as other countries. He set the stage open for the authors to come and display their creative skills. To conclude, he was very essential phenomenon for Indian English writing and helped us get global with ‘our say’ in fiction.

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R.K Narayan: The One Who Created Malgudi

R.K Narayan: The One Who Created Malgudi Blogs Home

14 Oct 2022

R.K. Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami is a legendary writer of early Indian English literature. Being a writer of fiction, non-fiction and mythology, R.K. Narayan proposed a great range of pen work for his readers worldwide. His famous autobiographical trilogy of “Swami and friends”, “The Bachelor of Arts” and “The English teacher” are one of his finest pieces, even the famous fictional town of “Malgudi” was introduced in the book “Swami and friends”. His connection to his characters and highlighting of the social context got him a serious comparison with William Faulkner.

R.K. Narayan was born in a Tamil Brahmin family in Madras, colonised India. He was the second son among five others with two daughters. His father being a school headmaster, taught him in his early days. His elder brother Ramachandran became an editor at Gemini studios and his youngest brother Laxman became a cartoonist. Due to his father’s transfer to a different location for work-related reasons, he spent a good part of his childhood with his maternal grandmother, Parvati.

In 1933, Narayan fell in love with a 15-year-old girl, Rajam, whom he met while he was vacationing at his sister’s house in Coimbatore. They got married, and Narayan started working as the first Brahmin Iyer for a Madras-based paper called, The Justice, dedicated to the rights of Non-Brahmins which caused a thrill. The paper got him great contacts and a new vision for the surrounding issues. Meanwhile, the manuscript he sent to a friend at Oxford earlier got the attention of Graham Greene, who decided to get the book published. Finally, Swami and Friends was published in 1935; book was semi-autobiographical as it included incidents from Narayan’s childhood. Another recommendation of Greene led to the publishing of his second novel, ‘The Bachelor Of Arts’ in 1937, based upon his rebellious college adolescence to his cultivated adulthood. This year also led to a great loss for Narayan as he lost his father. In 1938, he published his third novel, ‘The Dark Room’, which showcased the domestic dissension of the man as the oppressor and the woman being trapped as a victim in the marriage. The following year 1939, he lost his wife, Rajam due to typhoid, which affected him deeply. His daughter Hema was too young for the loss, and Narayan never remarried his whole life. The loss of his wife brought a compelling change in his life and inspired his next novel, ‘The English Teacher.’ He mentioned this book was almost an autobiography and the emotions detailed reflected his own when he lost his wife.

He published his short story collection, ‘Malgudi Days’ in November of 1942, following the publication of ‘The English Teacher’ in 1945, and both of them turned out to be a huge success. Due to the war in 1945, he couldn’t publish from England, which made him start his own publishing company called Indian Thought Publications. This project was a huge success and is still active, managed by his granddaughter now.

The engrossed years

Narayan’s writing after The English Teacher got more imaginative and took a turn from the autobiographical tone of the earlier work. His next, ‘The Financial Expert’ is considered his masterpiece and one of the most original fiction works of 1951. The next novel, ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’ was based on the visit of Mahatma Gandhi to the fictional town of Malgudi.

1953, turned out to be a great year for Narayan’s career as his work was published in the United States of America for the first time by the Michigan State University Press. After his daughter's wedding, Narayan seemed to travel a lot while writing at least 1500 words a day even while on the road. Narayan had a daily journal which later added to his book, ‘My Dateless Diary.’ His book, ‘The Guide’ is the most representative of his writing and skills, for this book he won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960. Narayan published another hit, ‘The Man-Eater of Malgudi’ in 1961, after which he resumed travelling. He went to Australia and U.S.A. He lectured about Indian Literature in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne for about three weeks, and the trip was funded by was Australian Writers’ Group. His success was treating him well, both literary and financially. He had a large house in Mysore, started writing for magazines and newspapers like The Hindu and The Atlantic, and drove a new Mercedes-Benz. His first mythological work was published in 1964, ‘Gods, Demons and Others’, a short story collection from Hindu epics. He published his next work in 1967, ‘The Vendor of Sweets.’ He also travelled to England this year, receiving his first honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds. He added more to his mythological work with, ‘The Ramayana’ (1972) and ‘The Mahabharata’ (1978).

Literary review

Narayan always relates with the reader when it comes to his writing. His technique contained ordinary connections and a natural element of humour. Critics compared Narayan with Chekhov due to his description of beauty and humour in tragedy. His writing tends to be descriptive rather than analytical which provides a more authentic and realistic narration. He always described the demands of society to be confusing a person’s individuality. He was very simple and realistic at capturing the elements of the situation very well on the paper

In May 2001, Narayan was hospitalised and died on the 13th of November, in Chennai at the age of 94. He won several awards and honours for his significant contribution to the literary world such as Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, AC Benson Medal, and multiple nominations for the Noble Prize in Literature. He was also nominated for the upper house of the Indian Parliament for a six-year term starting in 1989 for his outstanding contribution to Indian English literature.

In mid-2015, his former home in Mysore was converted into a museum in his honour. On 8 November 2019, BBC selected his book, Swami and Friends, as part of the 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

R.K. Narayan is one of the greatest writers of Indian Literature, contributing to the generational wealth of Indian Literature in English. He connected his readers with the surrounding world in a manner of humour yet reality. His work has been renowned worldwide and feeds those who want to see a change in society through the glass of a man who found compassionate humanism through the energy of ordinary life. Without showing the robustness of his characters he displayed the exact image of society on his pages. His work is a testament to one who wants to seek an avid range of fiction and non-fiction in the most resplendent bearing.

Chirag Joon

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Bi-Monthly, Peer-reviewed and Indexed Open Access eJournal ISSN: 0976-8165

R.K.Narayan: The Grand Old Man of Indian Fiction

Showkat Hussain Dar

(ex-student, Central University of Kashmir) Country: India(Jammu And Kashmir)

This is an axiomatic fact that the Indian fiction in English is the most popular of all forms and has gone ‘transnational’ with Indian diasporic living in the West and writing beyond nationality. The Big Three phrase coined by William Walsh comprises of Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan, have helped to lift this form to International status and recognition. The influence of their importance in the world of the Indian English novel cannot be measured. With Anand’s Untouchable , Narayan’s Sawami and Friends and Rao’s Kanthapura , the Indian English novel found its place in the gummut of Indian Literature.

R. K. Narayan is one of the leading figures in Indo-Anglian fiction. He is a pure artist. He is the only major writer in Indo-Anglian fiction who is free from didacticism. He is neither a spiritualist nor a social reformer nor a pure writer of comedies. He is an observer of life as it appears to him. His works are neither purely tragic nor purely comic. It is the mixture of the two. He believes in domestic harmony and peaceful relations.

R. K. Narayan is the creator of regional novel in Indian English Literature. The imaginative region of Malgudi is the domain of Narayan’s imagination. Wordsworth immortalized The District Lake in his poetry, and Hardy’s Wessex is a district more real than the present district of England. In the same way, Narayan’s Malgudi is a reality charged with all that is intimate and poignant in human nature. His characters are the true children of Malgudu . His characters reveal a definite journey of the self from innocence to experience and eventually to wisdom. His characters and plots are inseparably knit together. His works reveal his comic vision of life through irony and paradox. Narayan’s command over language is remarkable and he used it as the medium of story-telling in a simple, lucid and unaffected manner.

The Indian English fiction took the later start, yet it has gone far ahead of poetry both in quantity and quality. It was only with the Gandhian struggle that Indo-English novel really came to its own. With the publication of Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable , Raja Roa’s, Kanthapura , and

R. K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends that the novel in English may be said to have come of age. These three novelists have considerably enriched Indo-Anglian fiction. They are also known as the “founding fathers” of Indian-English fiction for whom the art were as important as the communication it sought to convey.

R. K. Narayan is widely regarded as India’s greatest writer in English of the 20th century. He was a pure artist whose sole aim was to give aesthetic satisfaction. Graham Greene the renowned English novelist with whom Narayan enjoyed a life-long literary friendship appreciates the Narayan’s art as “underlying sense of beauty and sadness” of his work is parallel with Chekhov.Greene further writes about his friend, “

Narayan wakes in me a spring of gratitude…without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian”.

Alfred Kazin estimates Narayan and his art in one of his reviews as,

“Mr. Narayan is an almost placid, good natured story teller whose work derives its charm from the immense calm out of which he writes. Mr. Narayan’s strength is that his material

seems inexhaustible. But there are levels of irony, subtle inflexions and modulations in his easy, transparent style.”

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan popularly known as R. K. Narayan was born in 1906 in Madras. It is bit surprising that one of the most successful Indo-Anglian writers wasn’t a good student. He failed both in High School and inter-mediate examinations and could get his degree only when he was twenty-four years old. As a result of these failures his personality was adversely affected and he became somewhat an introvert. These failures at school and college made him shy, reserved and diffident. He even tried to commit suicide once.

In order to supplement the meager income of the family, he worked as clerk and then took up the job of a teacher in a village school. But he was not satisfied with these professions and gave them up in desperation and decided to devote all his time for writing. He did not then expect to make money out of his writings but a mean for self expression. This all stands to reason in his first work. His first work was the review of a book titled Development of Maritime laws of 17th-Century England. He is rather cynical about it and writes,

“A most unattractive book, but I struggled through its pages and wrote a brief note on it, and though not paid for it, it afforded me the thrill of seeing my words in print for the first time.”

In those days it was unthinkable that an Indian could become a successful writer in English. Even his father did not like the idea of becoming a writer, considering the uncertainty involved in it. But Narayan was determined to become a writer and eventually proved how correct his decision was when he achieved tremendous success as a novelist and as a short-story writer.

R. K. Narayan wrote in English but attained popularity not only in India but in Europe for his sensitive observation of human nature. Most of his stories deal with Indian life and are written in a style which is both simple and lucid. Though he has written complete novels Like The Bachelor of Arts, Mr. Sampath, Swami and Friends, Waiting for Mahatma, Financial Expert but his magnum opus work is The Guide , for which he gained universal approbation. The novel became so popular that it was translated into number of languages in the world and even a film was made on it. Narayan’s genius was duly recognized when he was awarded Sahitya Academy Award for The Guide in 1960.But the writer is known for his short-stories and this has given him a permanent place in modern Indian English Literature. He has written more than one hundred and fifty short-stories. Some of them are Golden Belt, A Career, Man Hunt, End of troubles, The Snake Dogs , and A Hica . They were published in magazines and newspapers.

The stories of R. K. Narayan are chiefly plot stories. Not so much emphasis was laid upon incidents and characterization but in depicting the happening of day in day out life. His stories are ordinary occurrences yet they are profound in their affect. He only recreates the atmosphere in simple language and collecting details and thereby creating a lively tale of human experience.

R. K. Narayan was a conscious story-writer. He pursues his art with seriousness and dedication.His task was the faithful presentation of life which was purely Indian. His stories are free from artificiality and superfluous details. He appears to write with a set formula, working out on the details painstakingly, however, that does not undermine the naturalness of his narrative. It was able to depict something which was purely Indian.

Narayan didn’t follow the European style of story writing but bears affinities with American short-story writer O Henry. His stories have a tail and aim at surprising ending. He is a skillful narrator of factual and human scenes. His narration is direct, simple and pointed.

Narayan is regarded as a pure artist, especially, when compared with his contemporaries like Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. His is ‘art for art’s sake’. He didn’t write to propagate his ideas on social or political issues though when he started his literary career India was passing through the crucial period of her struggle for independence.

Narayan experienced a jolt when Rajam, his sweet heart, died of typhoid, only five years after their marriage. Her death was a shattering for the young writer. It was probably this tragic incident which gave maturity and depth to his character. This made him understand the harsh realities of life. Knowledge comes through intense suffering and Narayan must have gained knowledge by his personal suffering. His grief and suffering find expression in many of his works.

Narayan is one of the Indian greatest English writers of the last century. It was the television adaptation of his stories, his fictional town, Malgudi , that has left a permanent mark on psyche of Indian fiction readers. He takes us to Malgudi laugh, sympathise and share the vicissitudes of its inhabitants. Malgudi is as remarkable a place in literature as The Wessex of Hardy, Boarder countries of Scott or The Lake District of Wordsworth.

R K Narayan started his career as a novelist dealing primarily with the atmosphere of schools and colleges. Therefore, in all of his early novels there are mostly school boys, teachers, college boys and college teachers. His early novels include Sawami and Friends , The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room , and The English Teacher . The novels present a sociological study of the pre-independence era. The middle novels of Narayan except ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’ (depicts socio-political conditions of post 1947), are the delightful stories of three cunning sharks whose greatest fault was their over-confidence. In the middle novels we have Mr. Sampath, Financial Expert and The Guide . The later novels are based on the classical myths-the inevitable victory of the good over the evil, the law of life and concept of karama, the concept of cyclical existence and the four stages of human life. The later novels The Man-Eater of Malgudi, The Vendor of Sweets, The Painter of Signs and A Tiger for Malgudi embody the religious and cultural glory of Hindu society. The novels are marked with maturity in fictional imagination.

Narayan is a writer who has his limitations too. He presents a wide range of characters in his novels and short-stories. There are no “good” or “bad” characters in his works. The widespread and universal appeal of Narayan is due to the predominant middle class milieu in all his novels. Unlike Anand and Rao, he is not interested in politics. He is content like Jane Austen with his little bit ivory. But within his limitations Narayan is an exquisite master of the art of story-telling. We like him for his excellent plots, captivating characterization, lyrical language, sharp irony, wit and humour technique in unfolding the mysteries of human nature in his novels and short stories. His novels mirror microcosmic India caught in the conventions, traditions and social changes. His characters are lively presentations of common Indians. His heroines are replicas of common Indian women. Despite a pure Indian living absorbed in religion and family, he achieved a feat to express his creative urge in an alien language and has become virtually craze in European countries.

R. K. Narayan is not only a great novelist, but also a contented and simple man. The remarkable simplicity in his personal life, as experienced by K.Natwar Singh, is noteworthy to be mentioned here:

“I walked up the steps and met by a small man in a shirt and lungi-no shoes. Excuse me, but can you tell me if Mr. R K Narayan lives here? yes, he does, replies the barefooted man I asked if could see him. You are doing so right now—Iam R. K. Narayan”.

K. Narayan won numerous covetous awards for his tremendous contribution to Indian English Literature. Besides Sahitya Academy Award for the novel The Guide , he was able to receive the Film Fare Award. In 1964, he was awarded the Padma Bushan and in 1980 he got AC Benson Medal by the British Royal Society. It is notable that he was a member of Royal Society of Literature (British). In 1970, he received the honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds. In 1982, he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It is very remarkable that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for many times but unfortunately he never received the honor. In 2002, he was given India’s second- highest civilian award, the Padma Vibushan. This genius writer died at the age of 94 on 13 May in 2001 after getting the lofty height of success.

Works Cited:

The Guide by R K Narayan, Dr. S Sen Gupta, Unique publishers New Delhi, 2009

The Novels of R. K. Narayan, A Critical Evaluation by P. K. Singh, Atlantic Publishers New Delhi, 2001

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popularly known as , was an Indian writer globally known for his fictional writings of Malgudi. Also, R.K. Narayan was amongst the first few Indians who started writing Indian literature in English. Some of the most prominent contemporary authors of his time include Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, etc.

Born in in a family of Tamil Brahmins, R.K. Narayan was the second eldest son in a family of eight children. He was born in the Madras Presidency of British India but still made a reputed name for himself even amongst the conventional English readers.

Narayan was an avid reader from his childhood days and loved to read the writings of some of the best authors of that time. Some of his favorite authors were Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Wodehouse. Narayan developed a deep interest in writing after reading all these phenomenal authors and thus started to look for opportunities to showcase his abilities to the world.

R.K. Narayan took four years to complete his graduation, which was a year longer than the normal duration of the course. And, then he started teaching in a school but soon decided to quit this job to pursue a full-time career in writing. Narayan was once visiting Coimbatore, and there R.K. fell in love with a girl named Rajam. After facing several obstacles, he finally married Rajam in 1934.

Narayan is best known for his fictional writings, but he did not start his published writing journey with a work of fiction. His first publication was a book review of the Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England. Later, he worked as a short story writer for a local newspaper. Along with writing for local newspapers and magazines, Narayan also started working on his first novel and finally completed this novel in 1930. R.K. Narayan then showed the novel to several publications but was rejected by all the publishers.

The biggest breakthrough for R.K. Narayan came when he got a recommendation for "Swami and Friends" publication from the renowned English writer . The recommendation came because Narayan had earlier sent a copy of his novel to one of his friends in England, and then his friend showed the novel to Graham Greene.

Green also helped publish Narayan's next two novels, and The published novels were appreciated by the critics but failed to sell many book copies. Also, these two novels, along with "Swami and Friends," are considered a part of a trilogy based on a common theme.

R.K. Narayan deeply loved his wife, Rajam. But in 1939, Rajam suffered from typhoid and died soon after. The death of his wife badly impacted R.K. Narayan, and his mental health was affected very badly. Also, he was now left alone to look after his three-year-old daughter, Hema.

Such a personal loss of Narayan provided him with the inspiration for his next novel, With the publication of this novel, Narayan's writing slowly started to get the deserved recognition and appreciation from the readers. The biggest commercial success for Narayan came with the publication of in 1952 and was also hailed as one of the most original fictional writings of the year.

R.K. Narayan was also nominated as a member of Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament, in 1980. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha for his extraordinary contributions to literature. The legendary writing career of R.K. Narayan came to an end with his final book in 1992. R.K. Narayan died on , at 94 in Chennai.

The trio of R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand is India's leading English writers. Narayan succeeded in creating a legacy through his writing which the people will remember for a long time. He also played an important role in making the Indian culture accessible to the world's people through his writings. One of his biggest fictional successes is the town of Malgudi. All the stories of Narayan revolved around the town of Malgudi and its residents. He made Malgudi alive with all his stories and the characters.

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RK Narayan Biography

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RK Narayan was a famous Indian writer globally known for his fictional writings of Malgudi. He was born on the 10th of October,1906. In his long career, he published fourteen novels , over two hundred short stories, a memoir, two travel books, several essays, and two plays. He was among the first few Indians who started writing Indian literature in English.

He was awarded the AC Benson medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the Sahitya Akademi Award , the Padma Bhushan , and the Padma Vibhusan , third and second of India’s highest civilian awards. Swami and Friends, The Guide, and The Vendor of Sweets are some of his most famous books.

In this article, we will look into the biography of RK Narayan. Let’s explore.

Table of Content

RK Narayan Life Overview

Rk narayan – birth, early life, education, rk narayan career.

List of RK Narayan’s most famous books

RK Narayan Achievements

RK Narayan – FAQs

Full Name	Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami
Date of Birth	October 10, 1906
Place of Birth	Madras, British India (now Chennai, India)
Education	B.A. degree from Maharaja’s College, Mysore (now University of Mysore)
Career	Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Awards	Sahitya Akademi Award (1958), Padma Bhushan (1964), Padma Vibhushan (1980), and many more.
Famous Books	Swami and Friends (1935), The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), Malgudi Days (short stories, 1943), An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (short stories, 1947)
Died on	May 13, 2001
Death cause	Cardiovascular problems

RK Narayan was born on the Tamil 10th of October 1906 in a Tamil Brahmin family in his grandfather’s home in Madras (Now Chennai) during British Rule in India . His father is R.K. Krishnaswami Iyer who was the school headmaster and his mother Gyanamba l was a simple housewife. He spent his early years of life with his grandparents in Madras and he was very much inspired by his grandmother’s storytelling.

Every new day his grandmother tells him a new fictional story. He was one of the eight children and second among six sons, with two daughters in the family. He has spent a significant part of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, who instilled in him a love for storytelling and traditional Hindu values. He moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred to Maharajah’s College High School.

He gained his higher education from the Maharaja’s College High School in Mysore. He faced a setback by failing the university entrance exam in 1925. When he failed an exam then he took a break from college during that time he developed a strong passion for reading, devouring works by renowned authors like Dickens, Wodehouse, Conan Doyle, and Hardy. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 1930, taking a year longer than usual.

He started his career in the 1930s after finishing his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from the Maharaja’s College, Mysore . He was passionate about writing fiction, Narayan’s first published work in the 1930s was a book review . It focused on the development of maritime laws in 17th-century England, showcasing his diverse interests.

He then turned to short story writing , contributing to a local newspaper, “The Justice,” in Madras. This period allowed him to hone his writing skills and gain experience in storytelling.
While writing short stories, Narayan also dedicated himself to his first novel, “Swami and Friends” , completing it in 1930. He faced numerous rejections from publishers initially to publish his first Novel.
Despite the initial setbacks with his novel, Narayan remained determined. He continued writing short stories and published a collection titled “Malgudi Days” in 1943 . This book marked a turning point in his career and from that he became recognised as a novelist.

Establishing His Literary (1940s onwards)

“The English Teacher” (1945): The success of “Malgudi Days” opened doors for Narayan’s debut novel, “The English Teacher,” in 1945. This established him as a prominent literary figure and solidified his association with the fictional town of Malgudi , the setting for many of his future works.

RK Narayan Literary Career

Novels: He authored numerous critically acclaimed novels, including “The Guide” (1958) and “The Vendor of Sweets” (1967), further solidifying his position as a major literary figure.
Short Stories: He didn’t limit himself only to novels but continued writing short stories, publishing diverse collections throughout his career.
Publishing House: In 1941, Narayan established his own publishing house, “Indian Thought Publications” , contributing to the literary landscape beyond his writing.

List of RK Narayan’s Most Famous Books

Title	Year	Genre
Swami and Friends	1935	Novel
The Guide	1958	Novel
The Vendor of Sweets	1967	Novel
Malgudi Days	1943	Short Story Collection
The English Teacher	1945	Novel
Waiting for the Mahatma	1955	Novel
An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories	1947	Short Story Collection
The Financial Expert	1952	Novel
The Man-Eater of Malgudi	1961	Novel
A Tiger for Malgudi	1983	Novel
Lawley Road	1956	Short Story Collection
The Bachelor of Arts	1937	Novel
Mr. Sampath	1940	Novel
My Dateless Diary	1960	Essays
A Horse and Two Goats	1970	Short Story Collection

The key Achievements throughout RK Narayan’s life are as follows : Created Malgudi: He established the fictional town of Malgudi as a literary landmark, a setting for many of his stories that resonated with readers due to its universal themes and relatable characters.

RK Narayan’s writing played a significant role in introducing Indian culture, experiences, and emotions to a wider international audience.
He was recognized for his masterful storytelling abilities, weaving narratives that were both captivating and insightful.

Literary Recognition Achievements – Awards

Sahitya Akademi Award (1958): India’s highest literary honour for his novel “The Guide.”
Padma Bhushan (1964): Prestigious civilian award by the Indian government.One of India’s third-highest civilian awards.
Padma Vibhushan (1980): One of India’s second-highest civilian awards.
AC Benson Medal (1980): Awarded by the Royal Society of Literature, reflecting his international recognition.
Nominations and Recognition: He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on multiple occasions and received numerous other awards and accolades throughout his career.

Some Key Achievements of RK Narayan

He founded “Indian Thought Publications” in 1941 and Contributed to the literary landscape beyond his writing by establishing a publishing house.
He Authored “ Reluctant Guru ” in 1975 a non-fiction book showcasing his observations and reflections on life.
Several of his works, including “The Guide” and “Waiting for the Mahatma,” were adapted into successful films, further extending his reach to a wider audience.

FAQs on RK Narayan

What is the short biography of rk narayan.

RK Narayan was born on 10 October 1906 and passed away in 2001. In his long career he published fourteen novels, over two hundred short stories, a memoir, two travel books, innumerable essays, and two plays. His first novel was Swami and Friends (1935).

Who was the famous character created by RK Narayan?

The character “Swami and friends ” created by R K Narayan that lived in the city of Malgudi. Swami and Friends is a novel that was published in the year 1935. The book was originally published in the English language.

What are the achievements of RK Narayan?

Having a successful career of almost sixty years got R.K. a series of awards and honours including the AC Benson medal from the Royal Society of Literature , the Padma Bhusan and the Padma Vibhusan , third and second of India’s highest civilian awards.

What is special about RK Narayan?

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, popularly known as R.K. Narayan, was an Indian writer globally known for his fictional writings of Malgudi. Also, R.K. Narayan was amongst the first few Indians who started writing Indian literature in English.

Which is RK Narayan’s first novel?

His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), is an episodic narrative recounting the adventures of a group of schoolboys. That book and much of Narayan’s later works are set in the fictitious South Indian town of Malgudi.

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R.K. Narayan | Subarna Mondal

Home » R.K. Narayan | Subarna Mondal

MLA: Mondal, Subarna. “R. K. Narayan.” Indian Writing In English Online , 21 Oct 2022 , https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/r-k-narayan-subarna-mondal/.

Chicago: Mondal, Subarna. “R. K. Narayan.” Indian Writing In English Online. October 21, 2022. https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/r-k-narayan-subarna-mondal/.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (1906-2001) is one of the three most prominent Indian novelists in English (the other two being Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand) in late colonial and early post-colonial India. Born on the 10 th of October, 1906, in Madras, Tamil Nadu, in British India, Narayan studied in the Maharaja College of Mysore, and worked as a school teacher for a brief span of time before writing his first novel Swami and Friends in 1930.

It is in his very first novel that Narayan creates his famous Malgudi, a fictional town in Southern India that forms a constant setting for all his fifteen novels and most of his six short story collections. Malgudi as a literary space evolves with Narayan’s writings and his life: from a sleepy little town of Swami and Friends , it gradually grows to become a more settled space where the middle-class populace resides and socialises in The Bachelor of Arts (1937) and The English Teacher (1945). These three semi-autobiographical works reflect Narayan’s perception of his surroundings that gradually changes with time. From cricket matches to disrupted friendships, from the heady days of youth to a settled happy married life to the loss of his beloved wife – Narayan’s Malgudi, in this trilogy, charts the most turbulent years of his life.

Malgudi also traces the changing lives of a populace that was coping with and reacting to a succession of baffling fluctuations. While Narayan’s trilogy along with The Dark Room (1938) and Malgudi Days (1942) are set in a colonial space where the freedom movement is in full swing, The Financial Expert (1951), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), and The Vendor of Sweets (1967) are written at a crucial juncture of Indian history when the nation, like the fictitious Malgudi, is a newly (re)invented place, a hastily constructed melting pot of Indian and English milieu that the countrymen had to come to terms with.

In fact, during Narayan’s most prolific phase, India was going through major political and economic crises. Food scarcity, rising population, a listless economy, poor infrastructure, and four successive wars–World War II that ended in 1945, India’s war with China in 1962, and two consecutive wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 brought about an all-pervading gloom that eclipsed the initial euphoria of the post-independence years. Going against the tendency of his contemporary authors to brood over the prevailing conditions, Narayan continued to write of the everyday existence of ordinary Indians in his own ingenious comic ironic tone that rarely verged on being acerbic – a tendency which also earned him much caustic criticism. While Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak criticises his cultural compliance to an indifferent international reading class in An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), Shashi Tharoor does not spare Narayan in a deferred obituary published in The Hindu where he mentions “the banality of Narayan’s concerns, the narrowness of his vision, the predictability of his prose, and the shallowness of the pool of experience and vocabulary from which he drew” (2001). Undoubtedly, his scope was limited and he refrained from an outright censure of British rule, except in Swami and Friends and Waiting for the Mahatma . According to Paul Brians this itself was a deliberate political stance that Narayan had adopted as a form of silent resistance against the colonial regime (60). He concentrated on the daily oddities of Malgudi-dwellers, their professions, their leisure, and their love for folklore and mythology.

Folklore and mythic stories formed a significant part of Narayan’s childhood as he was brought up by his grandmother who provided him with a healthy dose of the magic of fables. This love for tales that were simple yet fantastic is perhaps what made him dare to choose a difficult and an unconventional career during 1930s: that of a writer. Further, the decision to write in English made him confront the added problem of dealing with Western readers whose minds were already swarming with images of sadhus, and cobras, and black magic when it came to visualising his country. It is this challenge which Narayan met with considerable success. As Olivia Manning states in The Spectator :

From Sirajudowlla to the curious monsters of Mother India, the Indian male has been presented to the British female as a tyrannical horror, a nightmare in the home. Mr. Narayan has changed him for us into a human being (qtd. in Imaging Malgudi , Ahluwalia 1).

The long-held extreme views of torture, violence and villainy that most Indian men were attributed with by the East India Company’s collective memory smarting in the aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny were furthered by contemporary issues such as child marriage, female infanticide, and Sati. Narayan, to some extent, mitigated this stereotypical image by humanising India through Malgudi. Narayan’s popularity in the West is based on his ability to depict the people of this newly independent country in all their diversity, inhabiting a society which is complex and multi-layered.

Narayan’s first three novels – Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937), and The Dark Room (1938) were all published in London, with the help of his friend and admirer Graham Greene (1904-1991). Swami and Friends , the first novel in his semi-autobiographical trilogy is about Swaminathan, a six-year-old boy and his gradual evolution as he journeys as a student from Albert Mission School to the indigenous Board School. From fascination for cricket and an internalising of British values and education to an understanding of how deeply attached he is to his grandmother and her tales, Swami and Friends is a bildungsroman where the protagonist after his brief encounter and awe of everything British, realises that he cannot resist the pull of his own culture and his own roots. Swami’s English-learning experiences and those of witnessing the Indian freedom struggle are straight out of Narayan’s own life ( My Days , Narayan 1974). The novel may well be an autobiography of any reader belonging to Narayan’s generation growing up under similar bewildering circumstances, oscillating between two different worldviews.

In Swami’s outburst against Christian teachings and his consequent expulsion from Albert Mission and his subsequent admission to the Board School of Malgudi, in his realisation of cricket and its values as a meaningless charade, in his oscillation between a choice of losing his friend Rajam and being true to his newly found belief, are rooted the basic dilemmas of an adolescent Indian male and his responses to colonialism. This dilemma is well-expressed in Narayan’s use of the English language in this work. The author’s use of Standard English Language with a third person narrator proceeds along with the characters’ use of English with a distinct Indian hue giving the readers a taste of Indian English.

The Bachelor of Arts continues the semi-autobiographical account of the author. In Chandran’s tale one finds a depiction of Narayan’s journey from the adolescent restlessness of Swaminathan in Swami and Friends to the restraint and maturity that Krishna strives for and ultimately achieves in The English Teacher . Sharing apparent similarities with “Araby” in Joyce’s Dubliners (1914), The Bachelor of Arts has a tongue-in-cheek approach to a coming-of-age novel. Chandran, the protagonist, falls in love with Malathi at first sight and is determined to overcome the narrow age-old customs of caste and class to marry her, as he ponders,

[s]uppose, though unmarried, she belonged to some other caste? A marriage would not be tolerated even between sub-sects of the same caste. If India was to attain salvation these watertight divisions must go–Community, Caste, Sects, Sub-sects, and still further divisions. He felt very indignant. He would set an example himself by marrying this girl whatever her caste or sect might be (1978, 97-98).

Failing to acquire the love of his life, Malathi, (whose opinion or voice we do not hear even once in the entire novel) for differences in horoscope, Chandran leaves home, feigns to be a sannyasi, survives by begging in a distant village, then comes to his senses, and returns to Malgudi. Much in the spirit of “Araby”‘s profound conclusion “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity” ( Dubliners , 38), Chandran’s deep understanding of life is stated thus:

Long after the babble of the crowd on the sands had died, and darkness had fallen on the earth, Chandran’s voice was heard, in tune with the rumble of the flowing river, narrating to Mohan his wanderings. He then explained his new philosophy, which followed the devastating discovery that Love and Friendship were the veriest illusions. He explained that people married because their sexual appetite had to be satisfied and there must be somebody to manage the house. There was nothing deeper than that in any man and woman relationship (198).

However, his first sight of Susila dispels all his dark opinions on the institution of marriage and shatters all his resolutions of remaining a celibate for life:

At this moment the girl slightly raised her head and stole a glance at Chandran. He saw her face now. It was divine; there was no doubt about it. He secretly compared it with Malathi’s, and wondered what he had seen in the latter to drive him so mad…. For the rest of the journey the music of the word “Susila” rang in his ears. Susila, Susila, Susila, her name, music, figure, face, and everything about her was divine. Susila, Susila- Malathi, not a spot beside Susila; it was a tongue twister; he wondered why people liked that name (258).

Thus ends a realistic comic-ironic depiction of a bachelor’s adventure, an adventure only to be taken up later by Krishna in The English Teacher . However, Chandran’s desire for love marriage and his refusal to succumb to the dictates of astrology, suggest the beginning of a generation that was attempting to step out of the traditional kinship networks so important in the Indian marriage market. As he raves at his mother, “To the dust-pot with your silly customs” (118).

The Dark Room , on the other hand, is an exploration of this same marital institution from the perspective of a woman. The most uncharacteristic of Narayan’s work, The Dark Room is a bitter tale of a disillusioned housewife, Savitri, who walks out on her philandering husband only to return to the confines of the same stifling household, burdened with the realisation that she will never be able to transcend the fear of being a lonely working woman for life. Unlike his other works, Narayan does not conclude this novel on a note of peaceful acceptance of the vicissitudes of life – a factor responsible for Narayan’s popularity amongst critics of the West – as rightly pointed out by Teresa Hubel in (114). The Dark Room offers us no consolation. Savitri remains lonely at the end. But she nevertheless realises the futility of trying to live up to her name – Savitri – the mythical archetypal woman of the Mahabharata , a figure exploited by the nationalist patriarchs of the time to safeguard the image of a selfless Indian woman readily sacrificing herself at the altars of a patriarchal society.

William Walsh detects a note of hysteria in this work of Narayan. He considers The Dark Room a “much less appealing one … It shows … at certain places a wash of unabsorbed feelings. There is a touch of hysteria in the novel …” (43). This reading perhaps misses a note of desperation in this story of Savitri that is in keeping with contemporary volatile debates around women’s issues. In The Dark Room , Teresa Hubel finds echoes of the concerns of the All India Women’s Conference, a major wing of Indian nationalist movement of the 1930s. She states, “[i]t is significant that he [Narayan] chooses to centre Savitri’s revolt on those two issues from the 1930s … the demand of middle-class women for work outside the home and their efforts to move beyond the discourse of the selfless heroine” (124).

Despite dealing effectively with contemporary issues and dilemmas and despite receiving good reviews, Narayan’s first three works did not do well. As Narayan famously speaks of his predicament: “Good reviews, poor sales, and a family to support” (qtd. in Sen 2004, 125). Under such adverse circumstances, desperately seeking publishers in India and abroad, Narayan finally managed to publish his articles and short stories fortnightly in a leading Madras daily, The Hindu , from 1938. The following year, Narayan’s wife, Rajam, died of typhoid. Narayan struggled with the twin burden of the loss of his wife and the loss of his readers in war-ridden England. Consequently, a series of three short story collections Malgudi Days (1943), Dodu and Other Stories (1943), and Cyclone and Other Stories (1945) were published by Narayan’s own publishing house in India, named Indian Thought Publications. Many of these stories had already been published in The Hindu .

Narayan states in his introduction to Malgudi Days (Indian reprint, 2005) that in his short stories there is “almost invariably the central character [who] faces some kind of crisis and either resolves it or lives with it” (viii). An astrologer who manages to escape his past, a doctor who would not lie, a dog who refuses to abandon his master despite being mistreated, a postman who loves reading others’ letters, or a retired office guard who is petrified of opening a registered post – Narayan’s short stories are teeming with oddities. His plots remain simple yet captivating, with a fair share of their focus on the underdogs of the society. Although depicting a clearly identifiable South Indian milieu, Narayan surprisingly manages to prove through these very stories that India is a culturally diverse nation space. In fact, to Narayan, Malgudi does not merely represent India in a microcosmic form, but it can be a place in any part of the world:

I can detect Malgudi characters even in New York: for instance, West Twenty-third Street … possesses every element of Malgudi, with its landmarks and humanity remaining unchanged – the drunk lolling on the steps of the synagogue … the barber, the dentist, the lawyer and the specialist in fishing hooks, tackle and rods, the five-and-ten and the delicatessen … all are there as they were, with an air of unshaken permanence and familiarity ( Malgudi Days , Narayan 2005, viii).

It is perhaps for this untiring fascination with humans and nonhumans that Narayan continued to be a keen observer of the life around him and an expert chronicler of their everyday existence.

His other collections of short stories An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (1947), Lawley Road and Other Stories (1967), and later Under the Banyan Tree (1985) were mostly reprints of the first three collections. While Under the Banyan Tree was published by Viking Press, An Astrologer’s Day and Lawley Road were published by Eyre & Spottiswoode and Hind Pocket Books respectively. Earlier, Eyre & Spottiswoode had also published the third of Narayan’s semi-autobiographical trilogy, The English Teacher in 1945. Unlike The Dark Room , The English Teacher presents an almost perfect picture of an idyllic married life of Krishna and Susila, only to be abruptly punctuated by the death of Susila. The novel ponders over the possibilities of life after death, the problems of a mechanical education system, and the politics of the kitchen through a study of ordinary yet highly eccentric characters. And all this is done in Narayan’s characteristic simple disarming prose. Susila’s character, for instance, is drawn with all its believable and relatable contradictions. She is parsimonious, but does not grudge added expenses for the old housekeeper. She tries to “get through Ivanhoe … and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare ” (2022, 59) while imbibing “many sensible points in cooking and household economy” (2022, 39) from her mother-in-law. She is a complete contrast to her predecessor (the elder daughter-in-law) in the family who “would never allow a remark or a look from my [Krishna’s] mother to pass unchallenged” being the daughter of a “retired High Court Judge” (2022, 40). Narayan, thus, offers us a brief glimpse of the functioning of a typical Indian middle-class family with the familiar mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law trope so popular, unfortunately, even today. Pitting one woman against another in a situation where ironically both women are victims of the same stifling customs is a motif touched upon in The Guide and The Painter of Signs as well. The English Teacher was an instant success selling thousands of copies. Narayan had tapped on the English taste for the idiosyncratic and had satisfied their curiosity about the pious East to a certain extent.

The English Teacher was followed by Mr Sampath- The Printer of Malgudi (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), and The Guide (1958). The last three works were published by Methuen, London. While Mr Sampath traces the rise and fall of a printer, Mr Sampath, as his career spans from the world of print to the world of the celluloid, The Financial Expert is the story of a financial wizard Margayya. The novel is pervaded by Narayan’s characteristic comic ironic tone with a touch of subtle pathos. While Margayya fleeces unsuspecting customers and amasses wealth only to be ruined by his own son, Babu; Mr Sampath is himself the architect of his own fall.

In Waiting for the Mahatma , Narayan depicts Gandhi as a character who visits Malgudi. The novel, however, is again a charting of the career of Sriram, a high-school pass-out – his love for Bharati (a staunch follower of Gandhian principles), his involvement with extremists, his consequent imprisonment and his reunion with Bharati as India moves towards its partition in 1947. Mr Sampath, Margayya, and Sriram, like many of Narayan’s protagonists, are flawed yet human, and it is not difficult, at times, to identify with them.

The Guide , his next venture, traces the journey of a self-centred tourist guide, Raju, who has no real love for the place he belongs to and yet is compelled to fast for his community at the end. Before the publication of The Guide , Indian readers were not as receptive to Narayan as the English, the Russian, and the American readers (Ahluwalia 9). While Narayan’s works were by then being published in America by the Michigan State University Press and Viking (followed by Penguin, which took over Viking), the gaps between these foreign publications and their Indian reprints reflect the relative indifference of the Indian readers in relation to their Western counterparts. Ahluwalia in Imaging Malgudi (2019) observes:

The first three novels – Swami and Friends , The Bachelor of Arts , and The Dark Room – were published in India after a gap of nine, twenty-eight, and twenty-two years, respectively. The gap reduced to single digits of nine, seven, and six in the next cluster of three novels – The English Teacher , Mr. Sampath , and The Financial Expert (8).

It is Narayan’s The Guide that made a perceptible difference in his Indian readership. The Guide won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961 and was adapted on screen in 1966. The figure of the truant young man transforming into a sadhu to perform the rites of expiation on behalf of his people, continued references to drought (a frequent occurrence in India), the developing town of Malgudi with relatable figures, and perhaps the appearance of a powerful woman character, Rosie/Nalini, who, unlike Savitri of The Dark Room , could free herself from the clutches of patriarchal expectation and could move from “strength to strength” ( The Guide 2005, 222), finally appealed to the Indian mind.

Yet, a number of Indian critics were left unimpressed by Narayan’s works. Malgudi, to them, remained a fictitious town that had little to do with the multi-layered reality of India at a crucial historical juncture. Malgudi, according to them, was too simple a space to depict and critique the complex series of colonial happenstance and neo-colonial alteration that shaped India. Shashi Deshpande, for instance, in R.K. Narayan: A Personal View (2007), equates Narayan’s writing to the act of “sending flat stones skimming over the surface of a still pond” (67). Kanaganayakam in Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction (2002) reminds us that “[a]part from Waiting for the Mahatma which deals specifically with the politics of Indian National Congress and the career of Mahatma Gandhi … the politics of decolonization have hardly ever been foregrounded in his work …” (40).

On the other hand, British authors like Graham Greene and Jeffrey Archer were staunch supporters of Narayan’s work. Greene compares Narayan with Chekov in his ability to coalesce humour and pathos and his complete freedom from the temptation of making subjective statements (Ram and Ram 2001). For Greene, it is this objectivity, this ability to describe people and incidents with minimum authorial intervention, that makes him an engaging author for the West. These attributes of his works gradually grew on the Indian sensibility as well.

A common dilemma that plagued the Indian sensibility of the time was explored in Narayan’s The Vendor of Sweets . The novel brings forth a common paradox of a typical Indian torn between his attachment to wealth and his commitment to the Gandhian principle of frugality and distaste for excess. On the one hand, Jagan never owns “more than two sets of clothes at a time” (9) and eats only “stone-ground wheat … with honey and greens” (10), on the other hand, he hoards “free cash” that comes from selling sweets “after six o’clock” that is “entitled to survive without reference to any tax” and is “converted into crisp currency at the earliest moment” (14). Jagan’s obsession over his son’s diet, his eccentric decision of a complete renunciation of salt and sugar, and his extreme efforts for procuring the hide of dead animals for his footwear, provide generous scope for the comic. But the comic is tempered with an understated pensiveness as we witness his affection for his insensitive son Mali, the reminiscences of his conjugal life and his ultimate capacity to let go. The comic in Narayan becomes effortlessly profound as we spontaneously respond to the weaknesses and flaws of these individuals of Malgudi, a place that has by this time expanded to Lawley Extension, South Extension, and the New Extension giving rise to a number of “newer colonies” ( Vendor of Sweets 17).

By the time The Painter of Signs was published in 1977, Malgudi “was the base for a hydro-electric project … jeeps and lorries passed through the Market Road … The city had a new superintendent of police … Policemen were posted every few yards” and “pedestrians and vehicles” choked the once-leisurely-paced streets (12). Like the shifting geography of Malgudi, the changing patterns of an individual’s love life are also addressed in this novella. From Chandran’s inability to marry Malathi because of a mismatched horoscope in The Bachelor of Arts to an idyllic conjugality in The English Teacher to the more complex companionship in The Guide where relationships are mostly transactional, The Painter of Signs brings forth a pronounced clash between two opposed views on romance and marriage- that of Raman’s grandmother and that of Daisy, Raman’s love interest.

Raman is caught between two worlds–a literary world that he inhabits through his reading of English authors, and the actual world, the complex social milieu of Malgudi that is a part of his real existence. Narayan, through this work (along with The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher ), maps how an ordinary Indian middle-class man, with his distant but constant exposure to the West, deals with or reacts to these shifting perspectives on love, partnership, and marriage. On the contrary, Daisy, the strong-willed female protagonist of the novel, is more resolute and has a clearer insight about the reality that surrounds her. At the end, it is Daisy who questions and challenges the age-old patriarchal beliefs that even most of the womenfolk of Malgudi (like Raju’s mother and Raman’s grandmother) have internalised, not realising that they have also been victims of unresponsive and unfeeling men for generations. “I can’t live except alone” is what Daisy says–doing away with the age-old fears that a single woman carries within her (179).

Narayan’s The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961) and A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), partly shift from human narratives and ponder on our anthropocentric complacency that takes the hierarchical positions of humans and non-humans for granted. In the introduction to A Tiger for Malgudi , Narayan observes, “… with a few exceptions here and there, humans have monopolized the attention of fiction writers. Man in his smugness never imagines for a moment that other creatures may also possess ego, values, outlook and the ability to communicate…” (7).

While A Tiger for Malgudi speaks of the adventures of a live tiger, his friendship with a man he calls “Master” and his ultimate peaceful settlement in Malgudi zoo, The Man-Eater of Malgudi is much more layered, as it deals with dead animals. The novel begins with the ominous appearance of Vasu, an evil characterwho disrupts the otherwise complacent and harmonious existence of Malgudi, especially the existence of a printing shop owner, Nataraj. Vasu is a taxidermist by profession. The word “taxidermy” has its roots in the Greek words “taxis” and “derma” which literally means “arrangement of the skin”. Vasu arranges the skin of dead animals and accrues profit from them and it is Natraj’s attic that he chooses as his workspace. Throughout the novel he bullies Natraj and makes his life a living hell.

A harmless peace-loving character being relentlessly bullied by a trouble-maker is common in Narayan’s work. But what is new in The Man-eater of Malgudi is the staggering number of deaths that the text speaks of. Animals are killed in hordes. The novel reeks of blood and tanned skin. Vasu’s career of hunting, killing, flaying and preserving animal skin is described in detail. The man himself explains:

… one takes a lot of care to bleed the animal, and only the skin is brought in … The paws and the head are particularly important … Bleeding, skinning and cleaning … we pack, or rather pickle, the skin in tins of salt immediately after flaying (50).

This destruction in the name of preservation leads Sundhya Walther to observe that “[b]y positioning the state’s ideology of conservation and Vasu’s ideology of preservation as ideologically linked, the novel calls nonhuman animal bodies into service to represent the violence of the dominant drives of postcolonial modernity …” (77). She reads the text as a critique of colonial appropriation of nonhuman bodies as a consequence of capitalist expansion. By situating The Man-Eater of Malgudi within the wider context of Nehru’s policy of animal conservation from the 1950s as a significant marker of ownership and unity of the newly independent state, Narayan, according to Walther, critiques and brings forth the failure of this project (2015, 80).

Vasu’s futile exercise of creating permanent artefacts from animal skin which is itself perishable is also comparable to Narayan’s futile efforts at preserving Malgudi, a peaceful harmonious space of Swami and Friends , that undergoes disturbing changes with time (as is evident in Malgudi’s enthusiasm to use Kumar, the elephant, as a trophy in processions that could fetch cash for the building of their temple). Malgudi has become as acquisitive and as “ugly” as Vasu – and thus Narayan’s failure to preserve his imagined India unruffled by caste, gender and religious discriminations. The work is peopled by upper-caste Hindus with no significant place for the outsiders. However, this highly insular space is finally contaminated by the stench of rotten animal carcasses that seem to linger even at the end of the novel (the stuffed cub, for instance). The novel concludes with Nataraj carrying a “little bit of Vasu that has become a part of him” (Cronin 1989, 33). The end of The Man-Eater of Malgudi is predictably dark, ambiguous and dystopic.

Narayan’s last two novels Talkative Man (1986) and The World of Nagaraj (1990) are centred on financially secure complacent men residing in Kabir Street with dreams of becoming successful writers – one a serious journalist and the other the author of a magnum opus on Narada (ambitions that remain unrealised) – till their peaceful life is disturbed by outsiders who enter their lives and change them forever.

Apart from this by-now-familiar plot of Narayan, Talkative Man , though hilarious in parts, is sketchy and lacks depth. But what is intriguing in the novella is that the reader is never sure as to who the actual ‘talkative man’ is. Is it the narrator, TM himself? Or is it the mysterious man, who calls himself Dr Rann from Timbuctoo who imposes himself on the narrator and the station master? Or is it the intimidating ‘talkative woman’ from Delhi in search of her coquetting husband, the supposed Mrs Rann? The novella explores the fascination and tyranny of tales. From TM’s constant small talks in the Town Hall reading room and the Boardless Hotel, to the tall talks of Mr Rann from Timbuctoo, to the recollections of the formidable Mrs Rann’s past life that TM is compelled to listen to- the reader of Talkative Man is alternately exasperated and amused by the ‘ancient mariners’ of this text (TM describes himself as Coleridge’s wedding guest when he cannot escape the grip of the recounting of Mrs. Rann’s past love life).

It is the figure of a compulsive storyteller that Narayan constantly evokes in many of his works. Nataraj’s printing shop, the Town Hall, the Boardless Hotel, the broad steps around the pedestal of Sir Frederick Lawley’s statue, Bari’s stationery shop, and Jayaraj’s studio are some of the spaces where stories are created, myths revisited and strange theories formulated. Narayan had once likened Mysore to an ancient Greek city, “[v]ital issues, including philosophical and political analyses, were examined and settled by people … on the promenades of Mysore” (Krishnaswami 2017). Narayan recreates this compulsive habit of weaving tales, preaching high philosophy, criticising government policies and spreading gossips in the shops, parapets, and restaurants of Malgudi streets and the pyols laid in the front yards of its households.

Nagaraj, the protagonist of The World of Nagaraj is also assailed by a similar compulsion. His ambition is to produce a work of epic proportions whose hero will be the sage Narada, the compulsive story-teller and trouble-maker. Narayan’s evocation of the figure of Narada may be a subtle dig at his own creative vocation. Like the mythical Narada, the author carries so many tales and news snippets in his head that he is compelled to share or else his head would crush under the burden of untold stories and unsung heroes ( Talkative Man 2020, 1).

Nagaraj desires to belong to this world of story-tellers. Thus, his search for the Narada lore leads him to visit a gambling Pundit and a bungling stationer. But his artistic pursuit remains unfulfilled as the ever-elusive Narada escapes him, not only because of inept advisors but because of a crisis in the form of Tim, his brother’s son, who arrives in his Kabir Street home and disrupts his peaceful family life and his noble quest for the Narada opus.

Narayan, unlike Nagaraj, contributes significantly to the body of Indian myths. Srinath notes that “Narayan, more than any Indian novelist except Raja Rao, has been inspired to a considerable extent by the Puranas, not merely in the ingenious way one of the legends is adapted in The Man-Eater of Malgudi but also in the art of story-telling” (419). Being raised in a Tamil Brahmin family and staying in close proximity to a grandmother who was a storehouse of ancient lore, Narayan internalised Hindu myths spontaneously. But Nandini Bhattacharya, while discussing the use of myth and reality in Narayan’s The Guide , rightly points out that in the present hybridised Indian space, it is no longer possible to use myths in a straightforward manner (Bhattacharya 2004). Thus, we have the Sitas and the Savitris of Malgudi households, the river Sarayu, the elephant Kumar worshipped in the temple of Malgudi, the snake dance of Rosie reminding us of Natraj’s crowning glory, the numerous mentions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata that are direct references to Indian myths that coexist with growing technology, interest in commerce and an increasing thrust on individualism that are part and parcel of a modern Malgudi life.

Narayan in his essay “The World of the Storyteller”, the opening chapter of his Gods, Demons and Others (1964), speaks of his belief in this coexistence:

Everything is interrelated. Stories, scriptures, ethics, philosophy, grammar, astrology, astronomy, semantics, mysticism, and moral codes – each forms part and parcel of a total life and is indispensable for the attainment of a four-square understanding of existence (4).

In Gods, Demons and Others Narayan retells stories the Indian Puranas. He narrates the tales of Yayati, Draupadi, Nala, Savitri, Shakuntala, Harishchandra and Sibi from the Mahabharata along with stories of Viswamitra, Ravana, and Valmiki from the Ramayana . From the Tamil epic Silapadikharam , he retells the tale of “The Mispaired Anklet”. Narayan’s taste for the comic-ironic is evident in his rendition of these tales – a tone he adopts even in his retelling of the epics The Ramayana (1972) and The Mahabharata (1978). He does not set himself up to the task of reinterpreting the epics and the Puranas as they appear in his writings. His approach is playful yet profound with a sharp insight that lends a fresh tone to the already-familiar episodes of these age-old literary texts.

Narayan’s last published work The Grandmother’s Tale and Selected Stories (1992), revisits the motifs that he had been preoccupied with in his long writing career–a storyteller in an anguished search of stories, a devoted husband in perpetual fear of his wife’s impending death, and a slice of Narayan’s great-grandmother’s biography – her dogged search for her philandering husband and her complete submission to him after he returns. We find traces of Savitri, Nagaraj, Daisy, Natraj, TM, Swami, Rosie, Raju, Krishna and the unnamed Mrs Rann in this work – numerous memorable and forgettable characters who dot our everyday lives and who appear in the pages of Narayan so effortlessly.

Both his fiction and his non-fiction such as Next Sunday (1960), My Dateless Diary (1960), My Days (1973), Reluctant Guru (1974), Emerald Route (1977), A Writer’s Nightmare (1988), A Storyteller’s World (1989), and The Writerly Life (2001) deal with a fascinating array of topics and characters. They range from a postman to the archetypal storyteller, from cows and milk to the landmarks of Mysore, from educational policies to his own anguished days as a student. All this is done with a subtle mix of humour and irony and a complete absence of didacticism.

Often compared to authors like Chekhov, Faulkner and Maupassant, Narayan was the recipient of the A C Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan awards. A tireless chronicler of small-town Indian ethos in the first three quarters of the twentieth century, Narayan’s constant search for the minutest plotlines in the local streets and markets he frequented ended on the 13 th of May 2001–the day he died in Chennai at the age of 94.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahluwalia, Harsharan Singh. Imaging Malgudi: R K Narayan’s Fictive Town and its People . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.

Bhattacharya, Nandini. R.K. Narayan’s The Guide: New Critical Perspectives . Worldview Publications, 2004.

Brians, Paul. Modern South Asian Literature in English . Greenwood Press, 2003.

Cronin, Richard. Imagining India . Macmillan, 1989.

Deshpande, Shashi. “R.K. Narayan: A Personal View”. Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 42, no. 2,2007, pp. 65-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989407078591 .

Hubel, Teresa. “Charting the Anger of Indian Women through Narayan’s Savitri.” Modern Fiction Studies , vol. 39, no. 1,1993, pp. 113–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26284399 .

Joyce, James. Dubliners . 31-38. Collector’s Library, 2005.

Kanaganayakam, Chelva. Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction . Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002.

Krishnaswami, Narayan. 2017. “An Author’s Story.” The Times of India , January 15, 2017. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/an-authoraposs-story/articleshow/56544856.cms

Narayan, R.K. The Bachelor of Arts . Indian Thought Publications, 1978.

Narayan, R.K. The English Teacher . Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2022.

Narayan, R.K. The Guide . Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2005.

Narayan, R.K. Malgudi Days . Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2005.

Narayan, R.K. The Man-eater of Malgudi . Penguin Books, 2010.

Narayan, R.K. My Days: A Memoir . Viking Press, 1974.

Narayan, R.K. The Painter of Signs . Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2014.

Narayan, R.K. Talkative Man . Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2020.

Narayan, R.K. A Tiger for Malgudi . Allied Publishers, Indian reprint 1995.

Narayan, R.K. The Vendor of Sweets . Chennai: Indian Thought Publications, Indian reprint 2021.

Ram, Susan and Narasimhan Ram. 2001. “R K Narayan: India’s greatest writer, illuminating the human condition through small-town life”. The Guardian , May 14, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/may/14/guardianobituaries.books .

Sen, Krishna. Critical Essays on R K Narayan’s The Guide . Orient Longman, 2004.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization . Harvard University Press, 2012.

Srinath, C. N. “R. K. Narayan’s Comic Vision: Possibilities and Limitations.” World Literature Today , vol. 55, no. 3,1981, pp. 416–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/40136551 .

Tharoor, Shashi. “Comedies of Suffering”. The Hindu . July 8, 2001. http:// hindu.com/2001/07/08/stories/13080675.htm

Trivedi, H. C. and N. C. Soni. “Short Stories of R.K. Narayan.” Indian Literature , vol. 16, no. ¾,1973, pp. 165–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24157228 .

Walsh, William. R. K. Narayan: A Critical Appreciation . Allied Publishers, Indian reprint 1995.

Walther, Sundhya. “The Nation’s Taxidermist: Ungovernable Bodies in R.K. Narayan’s The Man-Eater of Malgudi .” University of Toronto Quarterly , vol. 84, no. 4, 2015, pp. 74-89, https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.84.4.06

Subarna Mondal

Read r.k. narayan on iwe online, where do we belong the ‘problem’ of english in india | shashi deshpande, you may also like.

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Short Biography William Shakespeare

Short bio of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564.

His father William was a successful local businessman, and his mother Mary was the daughter of a landowner. Relatively prosperous, it is likely the family paid for Williams education, although there is no evidence he attended university.

In 1582 William, aged only 18, married an older woman named Anne Hathaway. They had three children, Susanna, Hamnet and Juliet. Their only son Hamnet died aged just 11.

Due to some well-timed investments, Shakespeare was able to secure a firm financial background, leaving time for writing and acting. The best of these investments was buying some real estate near Stratford in 1605, which soon doubled in value.

It seemed Shakespeare didn’t mind being absent from his family – he only returned home during Lent when all the theatres were closed. It is thought that during the 1590s he wrote the majority of his sonnets. This was a time of prolific writing and his plays developed a good deal of interest and controversy. His early plays were mainly comedies (e.g. Much Ado about Nothing , A Midsummer’s Night Dream ) and histories (e.g. Henry V )

By the early Seventeenth Century, Shakespeare had begun to write plays in the genre of tragedy. These plays, such as Hamlet , Othello and King Lear , often hinge on some fatal error or flaw in the lead character and provide fascinating insights into the darker aspects of human nature. These later plays are considered Shakespeare’s finest achievements.

When writing an introduction to Shakespeare’s First Folio of published plays in 1623, Johnson wrote of Shakespeare:

“not of an age, but for all time”

Shakespeare the Poet

William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets mostly in the 1590s. These short poems, deal with issues such as lost love. His sonnets have an enduring appeal due to his formidable skill with language and words.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:”

– Sonnet CXVI

The Plays of Shakespeare

The plays of Shakespeare have been studied more than any other writing in the English language and have been translated into numerous languages. He was rare as a play-write for excelling in tragedies, comedies and histories. He deftly combined popular entertainment with an extraordinary poetic capacity for expression which is almost mantric in quality.

“This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!”

– Lord Polonius, Hamlet Act I, Scene 3

During his lifetime, Shakespeare was not without controversy, but he also received lavish praise for his plays which were very popular and commercially successful.

His plays have retained an enduring appeal throughout history and the world. Some of his most popular plays include:

Twelfth Night
Romeo and Juliet

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…”

Death of Shakespeare

Shakespeare died in 1616; it is not clear how he died, and numerous suggestions have been put forward. John Ward, the local vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (where Shakespeare is buried), writes in a diary account that:

“Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.”

In 1616, there was an outbreak of typhus (“The new fever”) which may have been the cause. The average life expectancy of someone born in London, England in the Sixteenth Century was about 35 years old, Shakespeare died age 52.

Was Shakespeare really Shakespeare?

Some academics, known as the “Oxfords,” claim that Shakespeare never actually wrote any plays. They contend Shakespeare was actually just a successful businessman, and for authorship suggest names such as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford . Arguments have also been made for Francis Bacon . The argument that Shakespeare was actually the Earl of Oxford relies on circumstantial evidence and similarities in his writing style and relationships between his life and the play of Shakespeare.

However, there is no hard evidence tying the Earl of Oxford to the theatre or writing the scripts. By contrast, there is evidence of William Shakespeare working in theatres and he received a variety of criticism from people such as Ben Johnson and Robert Greene. Also, the Earl of Oxford died in 1604, and it is generally agreed there were 12 plays published after this date. (Oxfords contend these plays were finished by other writers.)

It is also hard to believe the vain Earl of Oxford (who killed one of his own servants) would write such amazing scripts and then be happy with anonymity. Also, to maintain anonymity, it would also require the co-operation of numerous family members and other figures in the theatre world. The theory of other writers to Shakespeare only emerged centuries after the publishing of the First Folio.

Shakespeare’s Epitaph

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare Blessed by y man y spares hes stones And curst be he y moves my bones

– More interesting facts on Shakespeare

Quotes on Shakespeare

“Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton’s his compeer, not rival.”

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Biographia Literaria (1817)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of William Shakespeare”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net , 18th May 2006. Last updated 1 March 2019.

Popular quotes of Shakespeare

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

– Polonius, giving Laertes a pep talk. ( Hamlet )

“To be, or not to be: that is the question Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;”

– Hamlet

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

– Hamlet (to Horatio on seeing a ghost)

“We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”

– The Tempest (Prospero)

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Julius Caesar (Cassius to Brutus)

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

– Macbeth (on learning of the death of Queen)

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

— Hamlet in Hamlet

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”

—Dauphin in Henry V

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.”

—Lucio in Measure for Measure

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition at Amazon

Shakespeare: The Biography

Shakespeare: The Biography at Amazon

Other Biographies and Resources on Shakespeare

Jokes about Shakespeare
Facts about Shakespeare
Popular poems of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare at BBC

English Literature
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Literary Terms
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R.K. Narayan Biography and Works

Table of Contents

What is the famous work of R. K. Narayan?,What is the short story of R. K. Narayan?,What is the theme of R. K. Narayan?,What is the first work of R. K. Narayan?,What is the fact about R.K. Narayan?,What did R.K. Narayan’s father do?,What is an accident story by R.K. Narayan?,What is the philosophy of R.K. Narayan?,Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, widely known as R.K. Narayan, stands as one of the preeminent Indian writers in English during the 20th century. Born on October 10, 1906, in Madras (now Chennai), India, Narayan’s literary legacy is synonymous with his captivating portrayal of South Indian life, blending humor and poignancy. R.K. Narayan Biography and Works

Early Life:

R.K. Narayan was born into a Brahmin family in Madras, where his father, R. K. Narayanaswami, served as a school headmaster, and his mother, Gnanambal, embodied traditional values. Despite the conservative environment, Narayan’s parents fostered his early interest in literature, setting the stage for his later literary prowess.

David Rubadiri Biography and Works
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Narayan commenced his education at the Lutheran Mission School in Madras, where he was introduced to English literature. Later, he pursued higher education at Maharaja’s College in Mysore, where his passion for writing flourished. During this period, he began contributing short stories and articles to various local publications. R.K. Narayan Biography and Works

Emergence into Writing:

In 1930, Narayan’s literary journey took flight with the publication of a book review in “The Justice,” a Madras-based magazine. His initial works reflected simplicity and a profound understanding of human nature. The pivotal moment arrived in 1935 with the publication of his debut novel, “Swami and Friends,” introducing readers to the fictional town of Malgudi, a recurring setting in his future works. R.K. Narayan Biography and Works

Noteworthy Works:

Swami and Friends (1935): Narayan’s debut novel explores the adventures of young Swaminathan and his friends, delving into the innocence and curiosity of childhood.
The Bachelor of Arts (1937): This novel navigates the challenges faced by Chandran as he transitions from college to adulthood.
The English Teacher (1945): Drawing from personal experiences, Narayan touches upon themes of love, loss, and spiritual awakening in this poignant novel.
The Financial Expert (1952): A satirical commentary on the pursuit of wealth, this novel features Margayya manipulating the economic system for personal gain.
The Guide (1958): Regarded as a masterpiece, “The Guide” follows the story of Raju, a tourist guide, exploring themes of love, spirituality, and self-discovery.
Malgudi Days (1943): A collection of short stories capturing the essence of life in Malgudi, showcasing Narayan’s wit and keen observations.

Recognition and Awards:

R.K. Narayan’s literary contributions received widespread acclaim, earning him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964 for “The Guide.” In recognition of his impact on Indian literature, he received the Padma Bhushan in 1964 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2000, two of India’s highest civilian honors.

Personal Life:

In 1934, Narayan married Rajam, with whom he had a daughter named Hema. Tragically, Rajam passed away in 1939. Despite facing personal and financial challenges, Narayan remained committed to his writing. In 1956, he married Rajam’s younger sister, Rajeswari, with whom he had another daughter, Aparna.

Later Years and Legacy:

In his later years, Narayan continued to write prolifically, with his works adapted into successful films and television series. Despite occasional criticism for not overtly addressing social issues, Narayan’s subtle and humorous commentary on Indian society resonates with readers worldwide.

R.K. Narayan passed away on May 13, 2001, leaving behind a literary legacy that transcends time. His writings, characterized by their timeless appeal, offer profound insights into the human condition and the intricacies of Indian society. Narayan’s ability to capture the essence of ordinary life with humor and compassion ensures that his works remain relevant and enjoyable for generations to come.

Major Works:

Swami and Friends (1935): This debut novel introduces readers to the fictional town of Malgudi and follows the adventures of a young boy named Swaminathan and his group of friends. It explores the innocence and curiosity of childhood, setting the tone for Narayan’s later works.
The Bachelor of Arts (1937): This novel delves into the challenges faced by the protagonist, Chandran, as he transitions from college life to adulthood. It addresses themes of identity, societal expectations, and personal growth.
The English Teacher (1945): Inspired by personal experiences, this novel explores the themes of love, loss, and spiritual awakening. The protagonist, Krishna, undergoes a transformative journey after the death of his wife, highlighting Narayan’s ability to blend the mundane with the profound.
The Financial Expert (1952): A satirical novel that follows the life of Margayya, a financial expert who manipulates the economic system for personal gain. The book provides a critical commentary on the pursuit of wealth and societal values. R.K. Narayan Biography and Works
The Guide (1958): Considered one of Narayan’s masterpieces, this novel tells the story of Raju, a tourist guide, and explores themes of love, deception, and spiritual redemption. The narrative structure is notable for its non-linear and layered storytelling.
Malgudi Days (1943): A collection of short stories set in the fictional town of Malgudi, each capturing the nuances of human relationships, societal norms, and everyday life. The stories showcase Narayan’s wit, humor, and keen observations.

Writing Style:

Simplicity: Narayan’s writing is characterized by simplicity, making his works accessible to a wide audience. He eschews elaborate language in favor of a straightforward and unpretentious style, allowing readers to connect with his narratives on a personal level.
Humor: A hallmark of Narayan’s writing is his subtle humor. He skillfully infuses wit and irony into his stories, often using humor to comment on societal norms and human behavior. This comedic touch adds depth and relatability to his works.
Characterization: Narayan excels in creating memorable and authentic characters. His characters are often drawn from everyday life in small towns, and he endows them with distinct personalities and quirks. This attention to characterization contributes to the realism of his narratives.
Regional Flavor: Narayan’s works vividly capture the essence of South Indian life and culture. Through detailed descriptions and cultural references, he brings the fictional town of Malgudi to life, making it a character in itself. This regional flavor adds authenticity and richness to his storytelling.
Exploration of Human Nature: Narayan’s narratives delve into the complexities of human relationships and societal dynamics. His keen understanding of human nature allows him to create characters that resonate with readers, and he skillfully explores universal themes such as love, loss, and self-discovery.
Subtle Social Commentary: While not overtly political, Narayan’s works offer subtle social commentary. He addresses societal norms, caste dynamics, and the impact of modernity on traditional values. His storytelling serves as a lens through which readers can reflect on broader social issues.

R.K. Narayan’s literary journey is a tapestry woven with simplicity, humor, and a profound understanding of human nature. Through the lens of Malgudi, his fictional town, Narayan painted a vivid portrait of South Indian life, capturing the nuances of everyday existence. From the innocence of childhood in “Swami and Friends” to the spiritual quest in “The Guide,” Narayan’s major works showcase a remarkable range of storytelling.

His writing style, marked by simplicity and subtle humor, made his works universally appealing. The characters he crafted, often drawn from the fabric of small-town life, came to life with authenticity and relatability. Narayan’s narratives, while deeply rooted in South Indian culture, transcended regional boundaries, earning him acclaim both in India and internationally. R.K. Narayan Biography and Works

As a literary luminary, Narayan received accolades, including the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Bhushan. His legacy endures, not only through his novels but also through the screen adaptations of his works. R.K. Narayan’s ability to blend the ordinary with the profound, coupled with his keen observations of human behavior, ensures his place as a timeless storyteller.What is the famous work of R. K. Narayan?,What is the short story of R. K. Narayan?,What is the theme of R. K. Narayan?,What is the first work of R. K. Narayan?,What is the fact about R.K. Narayan?,What did R.K. Narayan’s father do?,What is an accident story by R.K. Narayan?,What is the philosophy of R.K. Narayan?,

1. What is R.K. Narayan best known for?

R.K. Narayan is best known for his captivating portrayal of South Indian life in English literature. His major works, including “Swami and Friends,” “The Guide,” and “Malgudi Days,” showcase his keen observations, humor, and deep understanding of human nature.

2. What is the significance of Malgudi in R.K. Narayan’s works?

Malgudi, a fictional town created by R.K. Narayan, serves as the backdrop for many of his novels and short stories. It symbolizes a microcosm of Indian society, allowing Narayan to explore diverse themes such as human relationships, societal norms, and the impact of modernity on traditional values.

3. How would you describe R.K. Narayan’s writing style?

R.K. Narayan’s writing style is characterized by simplicity, humor, and a deep understanding of human nature. He uses colloquial language and subtle humor to make his works accessible to a broad audience. His storytelling is marked by authenticity, and he excels in creating memorable characters.

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Analyze the use of imagery in William Shakespeare’s sonnets

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R. K. Narayan's Writing Style & Short Biography
R. K. Narayan. K. Narayan, born as Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami in 1906, was one of the most refined Indian writers who wrote in English literature. He was famous for his fictional setting of a semi-urban South Indian town, Malgudi. Along with the other two significant writers, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand, Narayan was the leading ...
R. K. Narayan
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (10 October 1906 - 13 May 2001), better known as R. K. Narayan, was an Indian writer and novelist known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi.He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.. Narayan's mentor and friend Graham Greene was instrumental in getting publishers ...
R. K. Narayan Biography
Male Writers. Childhood & Early life. R. K. Narayan was born in Chennai, Indian in 1906 in a working class south Indian family. His father was a school headmaster and because his father had to be frequently transferred for his job, Narayan spent most of his childhood in the loving care of his grandmother, Parvati.
R.K. Narayan
They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. R.K. Narayan (born October 10, 1906, Madras [Chennai], India—died May 13, 2001, Madras) was one of the finest Indian authors of his generation writing in English. Reared by his grandmother, Narayan completed his education in 1930 and briefly worked as a teacher ...
R K Narayan Biography
RK Narayan was always found devoted and dedicated to reading whenever he got time. Awards and Honors. Among the best works of RK Narayan among his 34 novels, The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), and A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) were the best.
R. K. Narayan Biography
During the 1940's, Narayan had also been developing his skill as a short-story writer. By 1943, he had published his first two books of short fiction, with another volume the next year.
R. K. Narayan Biography, Life & Interesting Facts Revealed
This book was again published by Graham Greene who by now started counseling Narayan on how to write and what to write about to target the English speaking audience. In 1938, Narayan wrote his third novel called 'The Dark Room' dealt with the subject of emotional abuse within a marriage and it was warmly received, both by readers and critics.
R. K. Narayan Biography
When R. K. Narayan died on 13 May 2001 at the age of ninety-four, he left behind a body of work that will continue to impress generations of readers. Surveying Narayan's work, one is struck by the breadth and depth of his achievement. His first novel, Swami and Friends: A Novel of Malgudi, was published in 1935, and at the time of his death ...
R.K. Narayan
Students. Scholars. (1906-2001). R.K. Narayan was one of the best known and most esteemed Indians writing in English. He was essentially a storyteller and he did not blaze new trails in fiction writing, but he tried to convey a sense of the land and the people he knew so well. He was sometimes compared to the United States writer William ...
R K Narayan
The Guide (1958) Talkative Man (1986) Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) The English Teacher (1945) The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961) His novels exhibited a kind of subtle atmosphere very much apt for the kind of fiction R K Narayan wrote. The presence of dynamic Malgudi in the backdrop added soul to his plots as well his characters were, most of the ...
R.K Narayan: The One Who Created Malgudi
R.K. Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami is a legendary writer of early Indian English literature. Being a writer of fiction, non-fiction and mythology, R.K. Narayan proposed a great range of pen work for his readers worldwide. His famous autobiographical trilogy of "Swami and friends", "The Bachelor of Arts" and "The English teacher" are one of his finest pieces ...
R.K.Narayan: The Grand Old Man of Indian Fiction
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan popularly known as R. K. Narayan was born in 1906 in Madras. It is bit surprising that one of the most successful Indo-Anglian writers wasn't a good student. He failed both in High School and inter-mediate examinations and could get his degree only when he was twenty-four years old.
R.K. Narayan: Biography, death, short stories, parents
Born in 1906 in a family of Tamil Brahmins, R.K. Narayan was the second eldest son in a family of eight children. He was born in the Madras Presidency of British India but still made a reputed name for himself even amongst the conventional English readers. Narayan was an avid reader from his childhood days and loved to read the writings of some ...
RK Narayan Biography: Early Life, Education, Honours & Awards
RK Narayan was a famous Indian writer globally known for his fictional writings of Malgudi. He was born on the 10th of October,1906. In his long career, he published fourteen novels, over two hundred short stories, a memoir, two travel books, several essays, and two plays. He was among the first few Indians who started writing Indian literature in English.. He was awarded the AC Benson medal ...
R. K. Narayan Analysis
A prolific writer, R. K. Narayan published—besides the collections of short stories cited above—more than a dozen novels, a shortened prose version of each of the two famous Indian epics, The ...
R. K. Narayan Narayan, R. K.
R. K. Narayan, writing about that cherished and revered figure in Indian life, the village storyteller, displays all the gifts of wit, insight, moral inquiry and teaching possessed by—well, the ...
R. K. Narayan: Contribution to Indian English literature
His little dreams of middle class life are enacted in Malgudi, an imaginary small town in south India which comes to be felt as a living ambience in his fiction. After some works in journalism for a few years, Narayan has published his first novel Swami and Friends in 1935. This novel created for the first time the now famous "Malgudi".
R.K. Narayan
Born on the 10 th of October, 1906, in Madras, Tamil Nadu, in British India, Narayan studied in the Maharaja College of Mysore, and worked as a school teacher for a brief span of time before writing his first novel Swami and Friends in 1930. It is in his very first novel that Narayan creates his famous Malgudi, a fictional town in Southern ...
Short Biography William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616). English poet and playwright - Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the English language. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. Short bio of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564. His father William was a successful local businessman ...
R.K. Narayan Biography and Works
R.K. Narayan is best known for his captivating portrayal of South Indian life in English literature. His major works, including "Swami and Friends," "The Guide," and "Malgudi Days," showcase his keen observations, humor, and deep understanding of human nature. 2.
The Short Fiction of R. K. Narayan
THE SHORT FICTION OF R. K. NARAYAN* The oontent and context of Narayan rs short stories Almost every Indo-Anglian writer of fiction has tried his hand at short stories in addition to novels, and none perhaps quite so successfully as R. K. Narayan. Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and Narayan form the "Big Three" of Indian English writing.
Raja Rao Biography
Biography. Raja Rao (row), with Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan, is considered one of the most important twentieth century Indo-English novelists. The eldest in a Brahman family of nine children ...
Write Short Biographical Notes on William Shakespeare, Rk Narayan
William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. His birthday is most commonly celebrated on 23 April (see When was Shakespeare born), which is also believed to be the date he died in 1616. RK Narayan. Narayan then published his final book, Grandmother's Tale.

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