R. K. Narayan

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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 Ramayana and The Mahabharata, several travel books, volumes of essays and sketches, a volume of memoirs, and numerous critical essays. His novel The Guide (1958) was made into a successful motion picture, both in English and in Hindi.

Achievements

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R. K. Narayan, an internationally recognized novelist and the grand patriarch of Indo-Anglian writers (writers of India writing in English), received a number of awards and distinctions. In 1961, he received the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy (Sahitya Akademi), India’s highest literary honor, for his very popular novel The Guide. His other honors include India’s Padma Bhushan Award for distinguished service of a high order, 1964; the United States’ National Association of Independent Schools Award, 1965; the English-speaking Union Award, 1975; the Royal Society of Literature Benson Medal, 1980; and several honorary degrees. In 1982, Narayan was made an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He was named a member of India’s nonelective House of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, in 1989.

Narayan invented for his oeuvre the town of Malgudi, considered by critics a literary amalgam of Mysore, where he lived for several decades, and Madras, the city of his birth. He gently asserted that “Malgudi has been only a concept but has proved good enough for my purposes.” In its imaginative scope, Narayan’s Malgudi is similar to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, but whereas Faulkner’s vision is complex and dark-hued, Narayan’s vision is simpler, ironic, sad at times, yet ultimately comic.

Other literary forms

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In addition to his novels, R. K. Narayan (nuh-RI-yuhn) published a number of volumes of short stories. The title of his first collection of short stories, Malgudi Days (1941), is also the title of a later, expanded collection published by Viking in 1982. Other collections include Dodu, and Other Stories (1943), Cyclone, and Other Stories (1944), Lawley Road: Thirty-two Short Stories (1956), A Horse and Two Goats, and Other Stories (1970), Old and New (1981), Under the Banyan Tree, and Other Stories (1985), and The Grandmother’s Tale, and Selected Stories (1994). Two autobiographical works are My Days (1974), which covers four decades of Narayan’s career as a writer, and My Dateless Diary (1960), a journal of his travels through the United States. “Gods, Demons, and Modern Times,” a talk given at Columbia University in 1972, is collected together with tales from Indian mythology in Gods, Demons, and Others (1964). Narayan also published translations of two Indian epics: The Ramayana (1972) and The Mahabharata (1978). During the war years, he edited Indian Thought, and his weekly newspaper “middles” were collected in Next Sunday: Sketches and Essays (1960). A film adaptation of Narayan’s novel The Guide was released in 1965, but Harvey Breit and Patricia Rinehart’s stage adaptation of the novel only incurred Narayan’s displeasure. Despite his attempt to withhold permission for the production, The Guide opened on Broadway in March, 1968.

Achievements

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R. K. Narayan was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. He was also made a member of the Sahitya Academy (Literary Academy) in India.

Discussion Topics

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R. K. Narayan has made Malgudi a city both realistic and mythical. Are there any equivalents in Western novels?

Narayan was educated like a Westerner and sought to be accepted by Western readers, but these factors have not displeased Indians. What does this fact suggest about Indian culture?

Is The English Teacher autobiographical?

Is the tiger in A Tiger for Malgudi symbolic? If so, of what?

Can a novelist like Narayan succeed without immersing himself in other people’s activities? Does he sacrifice his perspective by doing so?

Was Narayan uncritically optimistic about human potentiality?

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