Grateful to Life and Death (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: R. K. Narayan
- First Published: 1945
- Type of Work: Magical realism
- Time of Work: The late 1930’s
- Setting: Malgudi, in Southern India
- Principal Characters: Krishna, Susila, Leela, The Friend, The Headmaster
- Genres: Long fiction, Magical Realism
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Family or family life, Love or romance, Race, Autobiography, 1930’s, Truth, Death or dying, India or East Indian people, Spiritualism, Loneliness, Typhoid fever
- Locales: India, Malgudi, India
The Novel
In his autobiographical memoir My Days: A Memoir (1974), R. K. Narayan declared that Grateful to Life and Death was the most autobiographical of all of his novels, very little of it, in his account, being fiction. This statement must immediately arouse doubt, if not skepticism. One can see how the start of the book, with its quasi-satirical picture of the protagonist, Krishna, teaching at Albert Mission College, could be drawn from Narayan’s memories of his own schooling at the Lutheran Mission School in Madras and the Maharaja’s Collegiate High...
[The entire page is 2077 words long]
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