RK Narayan’s India: A Perspective

RK Narayan’s India: A Perspective

Author: Dr. Kanika K Arya

Publisher: In-Depth Communication

Published: 2022-12-16

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 8194697123

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R.K. Narayan is a writer whose stories have enamoured my soul whether it was the rendition of stories on the audio visual medium or the books that filled my hands and mind with treasures of common and mystical. These stories are created in the simple yet magical world of Malgudi which has a wealth of peculiar characters straight out of a town or village in India; these common folk and their idiosyncrasies amuse and connect us with them in an incomprehensible way. We can analyse ourselves and our imperfections through reading their stories. These stories are a mirror to human frailties, thus, inspiring us to live rather than always trying to become better version of ourselves. Ambition, glamour, development, technology, competition, to grow big and do big is what has never touched Narayan stories…his characters live unperturbed in simple villages, simply enjoying every morsel and every conversation that comes their way. Indian myths and folklore form the bedrock of his stories. Simply told yet holding didactic messages through symbolic connect to mythology and Vedic and Puranic texts. A Narayan story is a sneak peek into the unpretentious common folk and their life and ambitions; wish the writer was presenting another story to us where how social media and digitization affects the amusing world of Malgudi would have been a treat to read! This book is an endeavour from my side to write about the contribution of Narayan to Indian English Literature and attempting a commentary upon some of his remarkable works


R.K. Narayan and His Social Perspective

R.K. Narayan and His Social Perspective

Author: S. R. Ramteke

Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9788171567485

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R.K. Narayan And His Social Perspective Deals With The Caste-Ridden Hindu Society Which Narayan Presents In His Novels. His Characters Are Fatalists With Explicit Faith In The Invisible. The Book Presents Their Half¬Hearted Attempts At Self-Assertion. However, Their So-Called Sentimentalism Does Not Bear Fruit And They Fall Back To Their Former Position Accepting Defeat In Life.The Book Brings Out Vividly Narayan S Atti¬Tude To Life, His Firm Grip Of Hindu Ethos Of Which He Is The Product, And His Failure To Come Out Of It, Though The West Wind Has Blown Much Of Its Dust.However Detached He Sounds Himself To The Readers, His True Spirit Finds Vivid Expression In The Book. At Any Rate R.K. Narayan Is A Thoroughly Indian Novelist Par Excellence, And The Aspect Is Hardly To Be Overlooked.


Imaging Malgudi

Imaging Malgudi

Author: Harsharan Singh Ahluwalia

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-05-22

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 152753491X

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R.K. Narayan (1906-2001) is one of the most influential and respected Indian writers. This book is a critical study of Narayan’s novels of the common people, their aspirations and struggles, their pieties and rituals, their myths and superstitions. The fictional town of Malgudi in pre-industrial Southern India is the setting for these timeless stories. The book presents a holistic view of Malgudi and its people from multiple perspectives, such as social, cultural, religious, and economic. In Narayan’s novels, tradition and modernity, fiction and reality, and mythology and history seamlessly merge to craft the narrative. They explore the impact of caste, class, and religion on the individual and the community, as well as the interface between the traditional and the modern, and the past and the present, highlighting the inherent pulls and tensions in society. However, even as Malgudi clings to its conservative past, it opens its doors to urban, educated, and professional men and women from the outside. The book will interest students, teachers, and scholars of literature.


Swami and Friends

Swami and Friends

Author: R. K. Narayan

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0345803795

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R. K. Narayan (1906—2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. Swami and Friends introduces us to Narayan’s beloved fictional town of Malgudi, where ten-year-old Swaminathan’s excitement about his country’s initial stirrings for independence competes with his ardor for cricket and all other things British. Written during British rule, this novel brings colonial India into intimate focus through the narrative gifts of this master of literary realism.


Collected Short Stories

Collected Short Stories

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2016-04-18

Total Pages: 742

ISBN-13: 9386057042

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Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story, ‘Untouchable’, at the age of sixteen, and has written memorable fiction ever since. He is famous not only for his love of the hills, but for imbuing the countryside with life and vibrancy through moving descriptions. The simple people who inhabit his stories evoke sympathy and laughter in equal measure. This wonderful collection of seventy stories, including classics like ‘A Face in Dark’, ‘The Kitemaker’, ‘The Tunnel’, ‘The Room of Many Colours’, ‘Dust on the Mountain’ and ‘Times Stops at Shamli’, is a must-have for any bookshelf.


The Man-Eater of Malgudi

The Man-Eater of Malgudi

Author: R. K. Narayan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1993-05-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1101662212

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This is the story of Nataraj, who earns his living as a printer in the little world of Malgudi, an imaginary town in South India. Nataraj and his close friends, a poet and a journalist, find their congenia l days disturbed when Vasu, a powerful taxidermist, moves in with his stuffed hyenas and pythons, and brings his dancing-women up the printer's private stairs. When Vasu, in search of larger game, threatens the life of a temple elephant that Natara j has befriended, complications ensue that are both laughable and tragic.


Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days

Author: R. K. Narayan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006-08-29

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1440674639

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Four gems, with new introductions, mark acclaimed Indian writer R. K. Narayan's centennial Introducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India "the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story." Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan's imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human experience. This edition includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize- winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Waiting For Mahatma

Waiting For Mahatma

Author: R. K. Narayan

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2016-10-27

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1787202143

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Set against the backdrop of the Indian Freedom Movement, this fiction novel from award-winning Indian writer R. K. Narayan traces the adventures of a young man, Sriram, who is suddenly removed from a quiet, apathetic existence and, owing to his involvement in the campaign of Mahatma Gandhi against British rule in India, thrust into a life as adventurously varied as that of any picaresque hero. “There are writers—Tolstoy and Henry James to name two—whom we hold in awe, writers—Turgenev and Chekhov—for whom we feel a personal affection, other writers whom we respect—Conrad, for example—but who hold us at a long arm’s length with their ‘courtly foreign grace.’ Narayan (whom I don’t hesitate to name in such a context) more than any of them wakes in me a spring of gratitude, for he has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian.”—Graham Greene “R. K. Narayan...has been compared to Gogol in England, where he has acquired a well-deserved reputation. The comparison is apt, for Narayan, an Indian, is a writer of Gogol’s stature, with the same gift for creating a provincial atmosphere in a time of change....One is convincingly involved in this alien world without ever being aware of the technical devices Narayan so brilliantly employs.”—Anthony West, The New Yorker


Writer's Nightmare

Writer's Nightmare

Author: R K Narayan

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2000-10-14

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 8184750765

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The pick of thirty years of essays from R.K. Narayan, India's greatest English language novelist. R.K. Narayan is perhaps better known as a novelist, but his essays are as delightful and enchanting as his stories and novels. Introducing this selection of essays, Narayan writes, 'I have always been drawn to the personal essay in which you see something of the author himself apart from the theme...the scope for such a composition is unlimited—the mood may be sombre, hilarious or satirical and the theme may range from what the author notices from his window to what he sees in his waste-paper basket to a world cataclysm.' A Writer's Nightmare is the marvellous result of Narayan's liking for the personal essay. In the book, he tackles subjects such as weddings, mathematics, coffee, umbrellas, teachers, newspapers, architecture, monkeys, the caste system, lovers—all sorts of topics, simple and not so simple, which reveal the very essence of India.


A Tiger for Malgudi

A Tiger for Malgudi

Author: R. K. Narayan

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1994-10-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1440618992

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A venerable tiger, old and toothless now, looks back over his life from cubhood and early days roaming wild in the Indian jungle. Trapped into a miserable circus career as 'Raja the magnificent', he is then sold into films (co-starring with a beefy Tarzan in a leopard skin) until, finding the human world too brutish and bewildering, he makes a dramatic bid for freedom. R.K. Narayan's story combines Hindu mysticism with ripe Malgudi comedy, viewing human absurdities through the eyes of a wild animal and revealing how, quite unexpectedly, Raja finds sweet companionship and peace.