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R. K. Narayan
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Not to be confused with K. R. Narayanan.
R. K. Narayan
Born
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami
(1906-10-10)10 October 1906
Madras, Madras Presidency, British India
Died
13 May 2001(2001-05-13) (aged 94)
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation
Writer
Nationality
Indian
Genre
Fiction, mythology and non-fiction
Notable awards
Padma Vibhushan, Sahitya Akademi Award, Benson Medal
Spouse
Rajam
Relatives
R. K. Laxman (brother)
R. K. Narayan (10 October 1906 – 13 May 2001), full name Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, was an Indian writer known for his works 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 for Narayan’s first four books including the semi-autobiographical trilogy of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. The fictional town of Malgudi was first introduced in Swami and Friends. Narayan’s The Financial Expert was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951 and Sahitya Akademi Award winner The Guide was adapted for film and for Broadway.
Narayan highlights the social context and everyday life of his characters. He has been compared to William Faulkner who also created a similar fictional town and likewise explored with humour and compassion the energy of ordinary life. Narayan's short stories have been compared with those of Guy de Maupassant because of his ability to compress a narrative. However he has also been criticised for the simplicity of his prose.
In a career that spanned over sixty years Narayan received many awards and honours including the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan, India's third and second highest civilian awards.[1] He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's parliament.
Contents
1 Life and career
1.1 Early life
1.2 Turning point
1.3 The busy years
1.4 The later years
2 Literary review
2.1 Writing style
2.2 Malgudi
2.3 Critical reception
3 Awards and honours
4 Legacy
5 List of works
5.1 Adaptations
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 Further reading
Life and career[edit]
Early life[edit]
R. K. Narayan , c. 1925-26
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras (now Chennai), British India.[2] He was one of eight children; six sons and two daughters. Narayan was the oldest of the sons; his younger brother Ramachandran later became an editor at Gemini Studios, and the youngest brother Laxman became a cartoonist.[3][4] His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school. As his father's job entailed frequent transfers, Narayan spent a part of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, Parvati.[5] During this time his best friends and playmates were a peacock and a mischievous monkey.[6][7][8]
His grandmother gave him the nickname of Kunjappa, A name that stuck to him in family circles.[9] She taught him arithmetic, mythology, classical Indian music and Sanskrit.[10] According to Laxman, the family mostly conversed in English, and grammatical errors on the part of Narayan and his siblings were frowned upon.[11] While living with his grandmother, Narayan studied at a succession of schools in Madras, including the Lutheran Mission School in Purasawalkam,[4] C.R.C. High School, and the Christian College High School.[12] Narayan was an avid reader, and his early literary diet included Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy.[13] When he was twelve years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for which he was reprimanded by his uncle; the family was apolitical and considered all governments wicked.[14]
Narayan moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred to the Maharajah's College High School. The well-stocked library at the school, as well as his father's own, fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. After completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination and spent a year at home reading and writing; he subsequently passed the examination in 1926 and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. It took Narayan four years to obtain his bachelor's degree, a year longer than usual. After being persuaded by a friend that taking a master's degree (M.A.) would kill his interest in literature, he briefly held a job as a school teacher; however, he quit in protest when the headmaster of the school asked him to substitute for the physical training master.[4] The experience made Narayan realise that the only career for him was in writing, and he decided to stay at home and write novels.[15][16] His first published work was a book review of Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England.[17] Subsequently, he started writing the occasional local interest story for English newspapers and magazines. Although the writing did not pay much (his income for the first year was nine rupees and twelve annas), he had a regular life and few needs, and his family and friends respected and supported his unorthodox choice of career.[18] In 1930, Narayan wrote his first novel, Swami and Friends,[17] an effort ridiculed by his uncle[19] and rejected by a string of publishers.[11] With this book, Narayan created Malgudi, a town that creatively reproduced the social sphere of the country; while it ignored the limits imposed by colonial rule, it also grew with the various socio-political changes of British and post-independence India.[20]
Turning point[edit]
R. K. Narayan with his wife Rajam, c. 1935
While vacationing at his sister's house in Coimbatore, in 1933, Narayan met and fell in love with Rajam, a 15-year-old girl who lived nearby. Despite many astrological and financial obstacles, Narayan managed to gain permission from the girl's father and married her.[21] Following his marriage, Narayan became a reporter for a Madras-based paper called The Justice, dedicated to the rights of non-Brahmins. The publishers were thrilled to have a Brahmin Iyer in Narayan espousing their cause. The job brought him in contact with a wide variety of people and issues.[22] Earlier, Narayan had sent the manuscript of Swami and Friends to a friend at Oxford, and about this time, the friend showed the manuscript to Graham Greene. Greene recommended the book to his publisher, and it was finally published in 1935.[6] Greene also counseled Narayan on shortening his name to become more familiar to the English-speaking audience.[23] The book was semi-autobiographical and built upon many incidents from his own childhood.[24] Reviews were favourable but sales were few. Narayan's next novel The Bachelor of Arts (1937), was inspired in part by his experiences at college,[25] and dealt with the theme of a rebellious adolescent transitioning to a rather well-adjusted adult;[26] it was published by a different publisher, again at the recommendation of Greene. His third novel, The Dark Room (1938) was about domestic disharmony,[27] showcasing the man as the oppressor and the woman as the victim within a marriage, and was published by yet another publisher; this book also received good reviews. In 1937, Narayan's father died, and Narayan was forced to accept a commission from the government of Mysore as he was not making any money.[28]
In his first three books, Narayan highlights the problems with certain socially accepted practices. The first book has Narayan focusing on the plight of students, punishments of caning in the classroom, and the associated shame. The concept of horoscope-matching in Hindu marriages and the emotional toll it levies on the bride and groom is covered in the second book. In the third book, Narayan addresses the concept of a wife putting up with her husband's antics and attitudes.[29]
Rajam died of typhoid in 1939.[30] Her death affected Narayan deeply and he remained depressed for a long time; he was also concerned for their daughter Hema, who was only three years old. The bereavement brought about a significant change in his life and was the inspiration behind his next novel, The English Teacher.[17] This book, like his first two books, is autobiographical, but more so, and completes an unintentional thematic trilogy following Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts.[31][32] In subsequent interviews, Narayan acknowledges that The English Teacher was almost entirely an autobiography, albeit with different names for the characters and the change of setting in Malgudi; he also explains that the emotions detailed in the book reflected his own at the time of Rajam's death.[33]
Bolstered by some of his successes, in 1940 Narayan tried his hand at a journal, Indian Thought.[34] With the help of his uncle, a car salesman, Narayan managed to get more than a thousand subscribers in Madras city alone. However, the venture did not last long due to Narayan's inability to manage it, and it ceased publication within a year.[35] His first collection of short stories, Malgudi Days, was published in November 1942, followed by The English Teacher in 1945. In between, being cut off from England due to the war, Narayan started his own publishing company, naming it (again) Indian Thought Publications; the publishing company was a success and is still active, now managed by his granddaughter.[15] Soon, with a devoted readership stretching from New York to Moscow, Narayan's books started selling well and in 1948 he started building his own house on the outskirts of Mysore; the house was completed in 1953.[36] Around this period, Narayan wrote the screenplay for the Gemini Studios film Miss Malini (1947), which remained the only screenplay by him that was successfully adapted into a feature film.[4]
The busy years[edit]
After The English Teacher, Narayan's writings took a more imaginative and creative external style compared to the semi-autobiographical tone of the earlier novels. His next effort, Mr. Sampath, was the first book exhibiting this modified approach. However, it still draws from some of his own experiences, particularly the aspect of starting his own journal; he also makes a marked movement away from his earlier novels by intermixing biographical events.[37] Soon after, he published The Financial Expert, considered to be his masterpiece and hailed as one of the most original works of fiction in 1951.[38][39] The inspiration for the novel was a true story about a financial genius, Margayya, related to him by his brother.[40] The next novel, Waiting for the Mahatma, loosely based on a fictional visit to Malgudi by Mahatma Gandhi, deals with the protagonist's romantic feelings for a woman, when he attends the discourses of the visiting Mahatma. The woman, named Bharti, is a loose parody of Bharati, the personification of India and the focus of Gandhi's discourses. While the novel includes significant references to the Indian independence movement, the focus is on the life of the ordinary individual, narrated with Narayan's usual dose of irony.[41]
Lyle Blair of Michigan State University Press (Narayan's U.S. publisher), Narayan and Anthony West of The New Yorker
In 1953, his works were published in the United States for the first time, by Michigan State University Press, who later (in 1958), relinquished the rights to Viking Press.[42] While Narayan's writings often bring out the anomalies in social structures and views, he was himself a traditionalist; in February 1956, Narayan arranged his daughter's wedding following all orthodox Hindu rituals.[43] After the wedding, Narayan began travelling occasionally, continuing to write at least 1500 words a day even while on the road.[36] The Guide was written while he was visiting the United States in 1956 on the Rockefeller Fellowship. While in the U.S., Narayan maintained a daily journal that was to later serve as the foundation for his book My Dateless Diary.[44] Around this time, on a visit to England, Narayan met his friend and mentor Graham Greene for the first time.[30] On his return to India, The Guide was published; the book is the most representative of Narayan's writing skills and elements, ambivalent in expression, coupled with a riddle-like conclusion.[45] The book won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958.[46]
Occasionally, Narayan was known to give form to his thoughts by way of essays, some published in newspapers and journals, others not. Next Sunday (1960), was a collection of such conversational essays, and his first work to be published as a book.[47] Soon after that, My Dateless Diary, describing experiences from his 1956 visit to the United States, was published. Also included in this collection was an essay about the writing of The Guide.[44][48]
Narayan's next novel, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, was published in 1961. The book was reviewed as having a narrative that is a classical art form of comedy, with delicate control.[42] After the launch of this book, the restless Narayan once again took to travelling, and visited the U.S.[15] and Australia. He spent three weeks in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne giving lectures on Indian literature. The trip was funded by a fellowship from the Australian Writers' Group.[49] By this time Narayan had also achieved significant success, both literary and financial. He had a large house in Mysore, and wrote in a study with no fewer than eight windows; he drove a new Mercedes-Benz, a luxury in India at that time, to visit his daughter who had moved to Coimbatore after her marriage. With his success, both within India and abroad, Narayan started writing columns for magazines and newspapers including The Hindu and The Atlantic.[50]
In 1964, Narayan published his first mythological work, Gods, Demons and Others, a collection of rewritten and translated short stories from Hindu epics. Like many of his other works, this book was illustrated by his younger brother R. K. Laxman. The stories included were a selective list, chosen on the basis of powerful protagonists, so that the impact would be lasting, irrespective of the reader's contextual knowledge.[51] Once again, after the book launch, Narayan took to travelling abroad. In an earlier essay, he had written about the Americans wanting to understand spirituality from him, and during this visit, Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo accosted him on the topic, despite his denial of any knowledge.[6]
Narayan's next published work was the 1967 novel, The Vendor of Sweets. It was inspired in part by his American visits and consists of extreme characterizations of both the Indian and American stereotypes, drawing on the many cultural differences. However, while it displays his characteristic comedy and narrative, the book was reviewed as lacking in depth.[52] This year, Narayan travelled to England, where he received the first of his honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds.[53] The next few years were a quiet period for him. He published his next book, a collection of short stories, A Horse and Two Goats, in 1970.[54] Meanwhile, Narayan remembered a promise made to his dying uncle in 1938, and started translating the Kamba Ramayanam to English. The Ramayana was published in 1973, after five years of work.[55] Almost immediately after publishing The Ramayana, Narayan started working on a condensed translation of the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata. While he was researching and writing the epic, he also published another book, The Painter of Signs (1977). The Painter of Signs is a bit longer than a novella and makes a marked change from Narayan's other works, as he deals with hitherto unaddressed subjects such as sex, although the development of the protagonist's character is very similar to his earlier creations. The Mahabharata was published in 1978.[56]
The later years[edit]
Narayan was commissioned by the government of Karnataka to write a book to promote tourism in the state. The work was published as part of a larger government publication in the late 1970s.[57] He thought it deserved better, and republished it as The Emerald Route (Indian Thought Publications, 1980).[58] The book contains his personal perspective on the local history and heritage, but being bereft of his characters and creations, it misses his enjoyable narrative.[48] The same year, he was elected as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and won the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.[59] Around the same time, Narayan's works were translated to Chinese for the first time.[60]
In 1983, Narayan published his next novel, A Tiger for Malgudi, about a tiger and its relationship with humans.[61] His next novel, Talkative Man, published in 1986, was the tale of an aspiring journalist from Malgudi.[62] During this time, he also published two collections of short stories: Malgudi Days (1982), a revised edition including the original book and some other stories, and Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, a new collection.[63] In 1987, he completed A Writer's Nightmare, another collection of essays about topics as diverse as the caste system, Nobel prize winners, love, and monkeys. The collection included essays he had written for newspapers and magazines since 1958.[64][65]
Living alone in Mysore, Narayan developed an interest in agriculture. He bought an acre of agricultural land and tried his hand at farming.[66] He was also prone to walking to the market every afternoon, not so much for buying things, but to interact with the people. In a typical afternoon stroll, he would stop every few steps to greet and converse with shopkeepers and others, most likely gathering material for his next book.[67]
In 1980, Narayan was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, for his contributions to literature.[68] During his entire six-year term, he was focused on one issue—the plight of school children, especially the heavy load of school books and the negative effect of the system on a child's creativity, which was something that he first highlighted in his debut novel, Swami and Friends. His inaugural speech was focused on this particular problem, and resulted in the formation of a committee chaired by Prof. Yash Pal, to recommend changes to the school educational system.[69]
In 1990, he published his next novel, The World of Nagaraj, also set in Malgudi. Narayan's age shows in this work as he appears to skip narrative details that he would have included if this were written earlier in his career.[70] Soon after he finished the novel, Narayan fell ill and moved to Madras to be close to his daughter's family.[66] A few years after his move, in 1994, his daughter died of cancer and his granddaughter Bhuvaneswari (Minnie) started taking care of him in addition to managing Indian Thought Publications.[6][15] Narayan then published his final book, Grandmother's Tale. The book is an autobiographical novella, about his great-grandmother who travelled far and wide to find her husband, who ran away shortly after their marriage. The story was narrated to him by his grandmother, when he was a child.[71]
During his final years, Narayan, ever fond of conversation, would spend almost every evening with N. Ram, the publisher of The Hindu, drinking coffee and talking about various topics until well past midnight.[72] Despite his fondness of meeting and talking to people, he stopped giving interviews. The apathy towards interviews was the result of an interview with Time, after which Narayan had to spend a few days in the hospital, as he was dragged around the city to take photographs that were never used in the article.[34]
In May 2001, Narayan was hospitalised. A few hours before he was to be put on a ventilator, he was planning on writing his next novel, a story about a grandfather. As he was always very selective about his choice of notebooks, he asked N. Ram to get him one. However, Narayan did not get better and never started the novel. He died on 13 May 2001, in Chennai at the age of 94.[12][73]
Literary review[edit]
Writing style[edit]
Narayan's writing technique was unpretentious with a natural element of humour about it.[74] It focused on ordinary people, reminding the reader of next-door neighbours, cousins and the like, thereby providing a greater ability to relate to the topic.[75] Unlike his national contemporaries, he was able to write about the intricacies of Indian society without having to modify his characteristic simplicity to conform to trends and fashions in fiction writing.[76] He also employed the use of nuanced dialogic prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the nature of his characters.[77] Critics have considered Narayan to be the Indian Chekhov, due to the similarities in their writings, the simplicity and the gentle beauty and humour in tragic situations.[78] Greene considered Narayan to be more similar to Chekhov than any Indian writer.[2] Anthony West of The New Yorker considered Narayan's writings to be of the realism variety of Nikolai Gogol.[79]
According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Narayan's short stories have the same captivating feeling as his novels, with most of them less than ten pages long, and taking about as many minutes to read. She adds that between the title sentence and the end, Narayan provides the reader something novelists struggle to achieve in hundreds more pages: a complete insight to the lives of his characters. These characteristics and abilities led Lahiri to classify him as belonging to the pantheon of short-story geniuses that include O. Henry, Frank O'Connor and Flannery O'Connor. Lahiri also compares him to Guy de Maupassant for their ability to compress the narrative without losing the story, and the common themes of middle-class life written with an unyielding and unpitying vision.[13]
Critics have noted that Narayan's writings tend to be more descriptive and less analytical; the objective style, rooted in a detached spirit, providing for a more authentic and realistic narration.[80] His attitude, coupled with his perception of life, provided a unique ability to fuse characters and actions,[81] and an ability to use ordinary events to create a connection in the mind of the reader.[82] A significant contributor to his writing style was his creation of Malgudi, a stereotypical small town, where the standard norms of superstition and tradition apply.[83]
Narayan's writing style was often compared to that of William Faulkner since both their works brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life while displaying compassionate humanism.[84] The similarities also extended to their juxtaposing of the demands of society against the confusions of individuality.[85] Although their approach to subjects was similar, their methods were different; Faulkner was rhetorical and illustrated his points with immense prose while Narayan was very simple and realistic, capturing the elements all the same.[86]
Malgudi[edit]
Main article: Malgudi
Malgudi is a fictional, semi-urban town in southern India, conjured by Narayan.[87] He created the town in September 1930, on Vijayadashami, an auspicious day to start new efforts and thus chosen for him by his grandmother.[88] As he mentioned in a later interview to his biographers Susan and N. Ram, in his mind, he first saw a railway station, and slowly the name Malgudi came to him.[89] The town was created with an impeccable historical record, dating to the Ramayana days when it was noted that Lord Rama passed through; it was also said that the Buddha visited the town during his travels.[90] While Narayan never provided strict physical constraints for the town, he allowed it to form shape with events in the various stories, becoming a reference point for the future.[91] Dr James M. Fennelly, a scholar of Narayan's works, created a map of Malgudi based on the fictional descriptors of the town from the many books and stories.[13]
Malgudi evolved with the changing political landscape of India. In the 1980s, when the nationalistic fervor in India dictated the changing of British names of towns and localities and removal of British landmarks, Malgudi's mayor and city council removed the long-standing statue of Frederick Lawley, one of Malgudi's early residents. However, when the Historical Societies showed proof that Lawley was strong in his support of the Indian independence movement, the council was forced to undo all their earlier actions.[92] A good comparison to Malgudi, a place that Greene characterised as "more familiar than Battersea or Euston Road", is Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.[84] Also, like Faulkner's, when one looks at Narayan's works, the town gets a better definition through the many different novels and stories.[93]
Critical reception[edit]
Narayan first broke through with the help of Graham Greene who, upon reading Swaminathan and Tate, took it upon himself to work as Narayan's agent for the book. He was also instrumental in changing the title to the more appropriate Swami and Friends, and in finding publishers for Narayan's next few books. While Narayan's early works were not commercial successes, other authors of the time began to notice him. Somerset Maugham, on a trip to Mysore in 1938, had asked to meet Narayan, but not enough people had heard of him to actually effect the meeting. Maugham subsequently read Narayan's The Dark Room, and wrote to him expressing his admiration.[94][95] Another contemporary writer who took a liking to Narayan's early works was E. M. Forster,[96] an author who shared his dry and humorous narrative, so much so that Narayan was labeled the "South Indian E. M. Forster" by critics.[97] Despite his popularity with the reading public and fellow writers, Narayan's work has not received the same amount of critical exploration accorded to other writers of his stature.[98]
Narayan's success in the United States came a little later, when Michigan State University Press started publishing his books. His first visit to the country was on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, and he lectured at various universities including Michigan State University and the University of California, Berkeley. Around this time, John Updike noticed his work and compared Narayan to Charles Dickens. In a review of Narayan's works published in The New Yorker, Updike called him a writer of a vanishing breed—the writer as a citizen; one who identifies completely with his subjects and with a belief in the significance of humanity.[99]
Having published many novels, essays and short stories, Narayan is credited with bringing Indian writing to the rest of the world. While he has been regarded as one of India's greatest writers of the twentieth century, critics have also described his writings with adjectives such as charming, harmless and benign.[100] Narayan has also come in for criticism from later writers, particularly of Indian origin, who have classed his writings as having a pedestrian style with a shallow vocabulary and a narrow vision.[15] According to Shashi Tharoor, Narayan's subjects are similar to those of Jane Austen as they both deal with a very small section of society. However, he adds that while Austen's prose was able to take those subjects beyond ordinariness, Narayan's was not.[101] A similar opinion is held by Shashi Deshpande who characterizes Narayan's writings as pedestrian and naive because of the simplicity of his language and diction, combined with the lack of any complexity in the emotions and behaviours of his characters.[102]
A general perception on Narayan was that he did not involve himself or his writings with the politics or problems of India, as mentioned by V. S. Naipaul in one of his columns. However, according to Wyatt Mason of The New Yorker, although Narayan's writings seem simple and display a lack of interest in politics, he delivers his narrative with an artful and deceptive technique when dealing with such subjects and does not entirely avoid them, rather letting the words play in the reader's mind.[100] Srinivasa Iyengar, former vice-chancellor of Andhra University, says that Narayan wrote about political topics only in the context of his subjects, quite unlike his compatriot Mulk Raj Anand who dealt with the political structures and problems of the time.[103] Paul Brians, in his book Modern South Asian Literature in English, says that the fact that Narayan completely ignored British rule and focused on the private lives of his characters is a political statement on its own, declaring his independence from the influence of colonialism.[98]
In the west, Narayan's simplicity of writing was well received. One of his biographers, William Walsh, wrote of his narrative as a comedic art with an inclusive vision informed by the transience and illusion of human action. Multiple Booker nominee Anita Desai classes his writings as "compassionate realism" where the cardinal sins are unkindness and immodesty.[104] According to Wyatt Mason, in Narayan's works, the individual is not a private entity, but rather a public one and this concept is an innovation that can be called his own. In addition to his early works being among the most important English-language fiction from India, with this innovation, he provided his western readers the first works in English to be infused with an eastern and Hindu existential perspective. Mason also holds the view that Edmund Wilson's assessment of Walt Whitman, "He does not write editorials on events but describes his actual feelings", applies equally to Narayan.[100]
Awards and honours[edit]
Narayan won numerous awards during the course of his literary career.[105] His first major award was in 1958, the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide.[106] When the book was made into a film, he received the Filmfare Award for the best story. In 1964, he received the Padma Bhushan during the Republic Day honours.[107] In 1980, he was awarded the AC Benson Medal by the (British) Royal Society of Literature, of which he was an honorary member.[108] In 1982 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[76] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times, but never won the honour.[109]
Recognition also came in the form of honorary doctorates by the University of Leeds (1967),[110] the University of Mysore (1976)[111] and Delhi University (1973).[112] Towards the end of his career, Narayan was nominated to the upper house of the Indian Parliament for a six-year term starting in 1989, for his contributions to Indian literature.[68] A year before his death, in 2001, he was awarded India's second-highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.[113]
Legacy[edit]
R. K. Narayan Museum, Mysore
Narayan's greatest achievement was making India accessible to the outside world through his literature. He is regarded as one of the three leading English language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. He gave his readers something to look forward to with Malgudi and its residents[102][114] and is considered to be one of the best novelists India has ever produced. He brought small-town India to his audience in a manner that was both believable and experiential. Malgudi was not just a fictional town in India, but one teeming with characters, each with their own idiosyncrasies and attitudes, making the situation as familiar to the reader as if it were their own backyard.[84][115] In 2014, Google commemorated Narayan's 108th birthday by featuring a doodle showing him behind a copy of Malgudi Days.[116]
"Whom next shall I meet in Malgudi? That is the thought that comes to me when I close a novel of Mr Narayan's. I do not wait for another novel. I wait to go out of my door into those loved and shabby streets and see with excitement and a certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching, past the bank, the cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet me I know with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open a door on to yet another human existence."
—  Graham Greene[117]
In mid-2016, Narayan's former home in Mysore was converted to a museum in his honor. The original structure was built in 1952. The house and surrounding land was acquired by real estate contractors to raze down and build an apartment complex in its stead but citizens groups and the Mysore City Corporation stepped in to repurchase the building and land and then restore it, subsequently converting it to a museum.[118][119]
List of works[edit]
Novels
Swami and Friends (1935, Hamish Hamilton)
The Bachelor of Arts (1937, Thomas Nelson)
The Dark Room (1938, Eyre)
The English Teacher (1945, Eyre)
Mr. Sampath (1948, Eyre)
The Financial Expert (1952, Methuen)
Waiting for the Mahatma (1955, Methuen)
The Guide (1958, Methuen)
The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961, Viking)
The Vendor of Sweets (1967, The Bodley Head)
The Painter of Signs (1977, Heinemann)
A Tiger for Malgudi (1983, Heinemann)
Talkative Man (1986, Heinemann)
The World of Nagaraj (1990, Heinemann)
Grandmother's Tale (1992, Indian Thought Publications)
Non-fiction
Next Sunday (1960, Indian Thought Publications)
My Dateless Diary (1960, Indian Thought Publications)
My Days (1974, Viking)
Reluctant Guru (1974, Orient Paperbacks)
The Emerald Route (1980, Indian Thought Publications)
A Writer's Nightmare (1988, Penguin Books)
A Story-Teller's World (1989, Penguin Books)
The Writerly Life (2002, Penguin Books India)
Mysore (1944, second edition, Indian Thought Publications)
Mythology
Gods, Demons and Others (1964, Viking)
The Ramayana (1973, Chatto & Windus)
The Mahabharata (1978, Heinemann)
Short story collections
Malgudi Days (1942, Indian Thought Publications)
An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (1947, Indian Thought Publications)
Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956, Indian Thought Publications)
A Horse and Two Goats (1970)
Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985)
The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994, Viking)
Adaptations[edit]
Narayan's book The Guide was adapted into the Hindi film Guide, directed by Vijay Anand. An English-language version was also released. Narayan was not happy with the way the film was made and its deviation from the book; he wrote a column in Life magazine, "The Misguided Guide," criticising the film.[4] The book was also adapted to a Broadway play by Harvey Breit and Patricia Rinehart, and was staged at Hudson Theatre in 1968 with Zia Mohyeddin playing the lead role and a music score by Ravi Shankar.[120]
Mr. Sampath was made into a Hindi film of the same name with Padmini and Motilal and produced by Gemini Studios.[121] Another novel, The Financial Expert, was made into the Kannada film Banker Margayya.[122] Swami and Friends, The Vendor of Sweets and some of Narayan's short stories were adapted by actor-director Shankar Nag into the television series Malgudi Days. Narayan was happy with the adaptations and complimented the producers for sticking to the storyline in the books.[123]
See also[edit]
The Martyr's Corner
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
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References[edit]
Kain, Geoffrey (1993). R.K. Narayan : contemporary critical perspectives. Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87013-330-5. OCLC 28547534.
Khatri, Chotte Lal (2008). RK Narayan: Reflections and Re-evaluation. Sarup & Son. ISBN 978-81-7625-713-8. OCLC 123958718.
Pousse, Michael (1995). R. K. Narayan: A Painter of Modern India, Vol. 4. Lang, Peter Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8204-2768-3. OCLC 31606376.
Prasad, Amar Nath (2003). Critical response to R.K. Narayan. Sarup & Sons. ISBN 81-7625-370-7. OCLC 55606024.
Ramtake, S. S. (1998). R.K. Narayan and his social perspective. Atlantic Publishers. ISBN 978-81-7156-748-5. OCLC 52117736.
Rao, Ranga (2004). R.K. Narayan. Sahitya Akademi. ISBN 978-81-260-1971-7. OCLC 172901011.
Sundaram, P. S. (1988). R.K. Narayan as a Novelist. B.R. Pub. Corp. ISBN 978-81-7018-531-4. OCLC 20596609.
Walsh, William (1982). R.K. Narayan: a critical appreciation. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-87213-1. OCLC 8473827.
Putatunda, Sarbani (2012). R.K Narayan: Critical Essays. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India. ISBN 978-81-203-4536-2.
Further reading[edit]
Ram, N.; Ram, Susan (1996). R.K. Narayan. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-670-87525-2. OCLC 36283859.
Rao, Ranga (2005). R.K. Narayan. Makers of Indian Literature (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. ISBN 81-260-1971-9.
show
v
t
e
R. K. Narayan
Novels
Swami and Friends
The Bachelor of Arts
The Dark Room
The English Teacher
Mr. Sampath – The Printer of Malgudi
The Financial Expert
Waiting for the Mahatma
The Guide
The Man-Eater of Malgudi
The Vendor of Sweets
The Painter of Signs
A Tiger for Malgudi
Talkative Man
The World of Nagaraj
Grandmother's Tale
Collections
Malgudi Days
An Astrologer's Day and Other Short Stories
Lawley Road and Other Stories
A Horse and Two Goats and Other Stories
Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories
The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories
Non-fiction
Next Sunday
My Dateless Diary
My Days
Reluctant Guru
The Emerald Route
A Writer's Nightmare
Mythology
Gods, Demons and Others
The Ramayana
The Mahabharata
Screen adaptations
Guide
Malgudi Days
Banker Margayya
Mr. Sampat (1952)
Mr. Sampath (1972)
Related articles
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Portal
Category
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Padma Bhushan award recipients (1960–1969)
1960
Haridas Siddhanta Bagish
Rabindra Nath Chaudhuri
Nilakantha Das
Rajeshwar Shastri Dravid
Kazi Nazrul Islam
Hafiz Ali Khan
Bal Krishna Sharma Naveen
Ayyadevara Kaleswara Rao
Acharya Shivpujan Sahay
Vithal Nagesh Shirodkar
1961
Rustomji Bomanji Billimoria
Seth Govind Das
Verrier Elwin
Niranjan Das Gulhati
L. Venkatakrishna Iyer
Rai Krishnadas
Sumitranandan Pant
Svetoslav Roerich
Bhagwan Sahay
Bindeshwari Prasad Verma
K. Venkataraman
Ardeshir Ruttonji Wadia
1962
Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar
Prem Chandra Dhanda
Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan
Daulat Singh Kothari
Mithan Jamshed Lam
Sudhansu Sobhan Maitra
Sisir Kumar Mitra
Tarabai Modak
Niaz Fatehpuri
Jal Ratanji Patel
Narayan Sitaram Phadke
V. Raghavan
Dukhan Ram
T. S. Soundram
Mahankali Seetharama Rao
Moturi Satyanarayana
Sitaram Seksaria
Santosh Kumar Sen
Tarlok Singh
Raja Radhika Raman Sinha
1963
Makhanlal Chaturvedi
Omeo Kumar Das
Nitish Chandra Laharry
Badri Nath Prasad
Kanuri Lakshmana Rao
Rahul Sankrityayan
Ramanlal Gokaldas Saraiya
T. R. Seshadri
Sardar Harnarain Singh
Ramkumar Verma
1964
Sheikh Abdullah
Nuruddin Ahmed
Rafiuddin Ahmed
Jacob Chandy
Kunji Lal Dubey
Tushar Kanti Ghosh
Dara Nusserwanji Khurody
Anukul Chandra Mukherjee
Jnanendra Nath Mukherjee
Bhola Nath Mullik
R. K. Narayan
Chintaman Govind Pandit
Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel
Bal Gandharva
T. N. Ramachandran
Khushwant Lal Wig
1965
Joginder Singh Dhillon
Bhalchandra Babaji Dikshit
Narasinh Narayan Godbole
Nawang Gombu
Sonam Gyatso
Kashmir Singh Katoch
Akbar Ali Khan
S. L. Kirloskar
Mohan Singh Kohli
Pratap Chandra Lal
Mohammad Mujeeb
Jayant Narlikar
Ramaswamy Rajaram
K. R. Ramanathan
Satyajit Ray
Triguna Sen
Harbaksh Singh
Vrindavan Lal Verma
Manikya Lal Verma
1966
Babubhai Maneklal Chinai
Puliyur Krishnaswamy Duraiswami
Verghese Kurien
Zubin Mehta
K. P. Kesava Menon
Mannathu Padmanabha Pillai
K. Shankar Pillai
Vikram Sarabhai
Vinayak Sitaram Sarwate
Homi Sethna
Jodh Singh
Haribhau Upadhyaya
1967
Mulk Raj Anand
Tara Cherian
Krishna Kanta Handique
Akshay Kumar Jain
Pupul Jayakar
Ali Akbar Khan
D. P. Kohli
Ramanathan Krishnan
C. K. Lakshmanan
S. I. Padmavati
D. C. Pavate
Datto Vaman Potdar
B. Shiva Rao
Khwaja Ghulam Saiyidain
Mihir Sen
Ravi Shankar
M. L. Vasanthakumari
1968
Acharya Vishva Bandhu
Prabhu Lal Bhatnagar
Mary Clubwala Jadhav
K. Shivaram Karanth
Bismillah Khan
Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar
Sam Manekshaw
Mansukhlal Atmaram Master
M. G. K. Menon
Waman Bapuji Metre
Gujarmal Modi
Murugappa Channaveerappa Modi
Benjamin Peary Pal
Brahm Prakash
Manikonda Chalapathi Rau
C. R. Rao
Radhanath Rath
Mariadas Ruthnaswamy
Firaq Gorakhpuri
Shripad Damodar Satwalekar
G. Sankara Kurup
Periyasaamy Thooran
Mamidipudi Venkatarangayya
1969
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay
Rahim-ud-in Khan Dagar
Mohanlal Lallubhai Dantwala
Keshavrao Krishnarao Datey
Keshav Prasad Goenka
Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer
Vithalbhai Jhaveri
Prithviraj Kapoor
Kesarbai Kerkar
Krishna Kripalani
Adinath Lahiri
Gobind Behari Lal
Kasturbhai Lalbhai
Lata Mangeshkar
V. K. Narayana Menon
Saghar Nizami
Nanasaheb Parulekar
Yashwant Dinkar Pendharkar
Vitthal Laxman Phadke
Raja Rao
Niharranjan Ray
Prafulla Kumar Sen
Haroon Khan Sherwani
Naval Tata
S. S. Vasan
# Posthumous conferral
1954–1959
1960–1969
1970–1979
1980–1989
1990–1999
2000–2009
2010–2019
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Filmfare Award for Best Story
1955-1970
Mukhram Sharma (1955)
Rajinder Singh Bedi (1956)
Amiya Chakrabarty (1957)
Akhtar Mirza (1958)
Mukhram Sharma (1959)
Subodh Ghosh (1960)
Ruby Sen (1961)
C. V. Sridhar (1962)
K.P. Kottarakara (1963)
Jarasandha (1964)
Ban Bhatt (1965)
Akhtar Mirza (1966)
R. K. Narayan (1967)
Manoj Kumar (1968)
Sachin Bhowmick (1969)
Vasant Shankar Kanetkar (1970)
1971-1990
Chandrakant Kakodkar (1971)
Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1972)
Basu Bhattacharya (1973)
Salim-Javed (1974)
Kaifi Azmi, Ismat Chughtai (1975)
Salim-Javed (1976)
Balaichand Mukherjee (1977)
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1978)
Dinesh Thakur (1979)
Shanker Shesh (1980)
Vijay Tendulkar (1981)
Chetan Anand (1982)
Samresh Basu (1983)
S. D. Palwalker (1984)
Mahesh Bhatt (1985)
Aleem Masroor (1986)
no award (1987)
no award (1988)
Subodh Ghosh (1989)
Kasinathuni Viswanath (1990)
1991-2010
Rajkumar Santoshi (1991 )
Honey Irani (1992)
no award given (1993)
Sutanu Gupta (1994)
K. K. Singh (1995)
Ram Gopal Varma (1996)
Gulzar (1997)
Kamal Haasan (1998)
Mahesh Bhatt (1999)
Vinay Shukla (2000)
Honey Irani (2001)
Ashutosh Gowariker (2002)
Jaideep Sahni (2003)
Nagesh Kukunoor (2004)
Aditya Chopra (2005)
Sudhir Mishra, Ruchi Narain & Shivkumar Subramaniam (2006 )
Rajkumar Hirani & Vidhu Vinod Chopra (2007)
Amole Gupte (2008)
Abhishek Kapoor (2009)
Abhijat Joshi & Rajkumar Hirani (2010)
2011-present
Anurag Kashyap & Vikramaditya Motwane (2011)
Sanjay Chauhan (2012)
Juhi Chaturvedi (2013)
Subhash Kapoor (2014)
Rajat Kapoor (2015)
K. V. Vijayendra Prasad (2016)
Shakun Batra (2017)
Amit V Masurkar (2018)
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Sahitya Akademi Award for English
1960–1970
The Guide by R. K. Narayan (1960)
The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao (1964)
The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin by Verrier Elwin (1965)
Shadow From Ladakh by Bhabani Bhattacharya (1967)
An Artist in Life by Niharranjan Ray (1969)
1971–1980
Morning Face by Mulk Raj Anand (1971)
Scholar Extraordinary by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1975)
Jawaharlal Nehru by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)
Azadi by Chaman Nahal (1977)
Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai (1978)
Inside the Haveli by Rama Mehta (1979)
On the Mother by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1980)
1981–1990
Relationship by Jayanta Mahapatra (1981)
The Last Labyrinth by Arun Joshi (1982)
Latter-Day Psalms by Nissim Ezekiel (1983)
The Keeper of the Dead by Keki N. Daruwalla (1984)
Collected Poems by Kamala Das (1985)
Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal (1986)
Trapfalls In the Sky by Shiv K. Kumar (1987)
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (1988)
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (1989)
That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande (1990)
1991–2000
The Trotter-Nama by Allan Sealy (1991)
Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra by Ruskin Bond (1992)
After Amnesia by G. N. Devy (1993)
Serendip by Dom Moraes (1994)
Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta (1996)
Final Solutions and Other Plays by Mahesh Dattani (1998)
The Collected Poems by A. K. Ramanujan (1999)
Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar (2000)
2001–2010
Rajaji: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi (2001)
A New World by Amit Chaudhuri (2002)
The Perishable Empire by Meenakshi Mukherjee (2003)
The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee (2004)
The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy (2005)
The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa (2006)
Disorderly Women by Malathi Rao (2007)
Mahabharata: An Inquiry into the Human Condition by Chaturvedi Badrinath (2009)
The Book of Rachel by Esther David (2010)
2011–present
India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha (2011)
These Errors are Correct by Jeet Thayil (2012)
Laburnum For My Head by Temsula Ao (2013)
Trying to Say Goodbye by Adil Jussawalla (2014)
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry (2015)
Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto (2016)
The Black Hill by Mamang Dai (2017)
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Sahitya Akademi fellows
1968–1980
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1968)
D. R. Bendre, Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Sumitranandan Pant, C. Rajagopalachari (1969)
Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, Viswanatha Satyanarayana (1970)
Kaka Kalelkar, Gopinath Kaviraj, Gurbaksh Singh, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971)
Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Mangharam Udharam Malkani, Nilmoni Phukan, Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, Sukumar Sen, V. R. Trivedi (1973)
T. P. Meenakshisundaram (1975)
Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande, Jainendra Kumar, Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa 'Kuvempu', V. Raghavan, Mahadevi Varma (1979)
1981–2000
Umashankar Joshi, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, K. Shivaram Karanth (1985)
Mulk Raj Anand, Vinayaka Krishna Gokak, Laxmanshastri Balaji Joshi, Amritlal Nagar, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Annada Shankar Ray (1989)
Nagarjun, Balamani Amma, Ashapoorna Devi, Qurratulain Hyder, Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, P. T. Narasimhachar, R. K. Narayan, Harbhajan Singh (1994)
Jayakanthan, Vinda Karandikar, Vidya Niwas Mishra, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Raja Rao, Sachidananda Routray, Krishna Sobti (1996)
Syed Abdul Malik, K. S. Narasimhaswamy, Gunturu Seshendra Sarma, Rajendra Shah, Ram Vilas Sharma, N. Khelchandra Singh (1999)
Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, Rehman Rahi (2000)
2001–present
Ram Nath Shastri (2001)
Kaifi Azmi, Govind Chandra Pande, Nilamani Phookan, Bhisham Sahni (2002)
Kovilan, U. R. Ananthamurthy, Vijaydan Detha, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Amrita Pritam, Shankha Ghosh, Nirmal Verma (2004)
Manoj Das, Vishnu Prabhakar (2006)
Anita Desai, Kartar Singh Duggal, Ravindra Kelekar (2007)
Gopi Chand Narang, Ramakanta Rath (2009)
Chandranath Mishra Amar, Kunwar Narayan, Bholabhai Patel, Kedarnath Singh, Khushwant Singh (2010)
Raghuveer Chaudhari, Arjan Hasid, Sitakant Mahapatra, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Asit Rai, Satya Vrat Shastri (2013)
Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa, C. Narayana Reddy (2014)
Nirendranath Chakravarty, Gurdial Singh (2016)
Honorary Fellows
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1974)
Edward C. Dimock, Jr., Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr., Kamil Zvelebil, Ji Xianlin (1996)
Vassilis Vitsaxis, Eugene Chelyshev (2002)
Ronald E. Asher (2007)
Abhimanyu Unnuth (2013)
Premchand Fellowship
Intizar Hussain (2005)
Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship
Senake Bandaranayake, Chie Nakane, Azad N. Shamatov (1996)
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Mysore topics
Kings
Wodeyar dynasty
Chamarajendra Wodeyar X
Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV
Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar
Srikantadatta Wodeyar
Religious
Dasara
Vijayadashami
Chamundi Temple
St. Philomena's Church
Palaces
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Masala dosa
Museums and Institutions
Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts
Regional Museum of Natural History
Folk Lore Museum
Rail Museum
Oriental Research Institute
Personalities
Kuvempu
B. V. Karanth
S. Srikanta Sastri
R. K. Narayan
R. K. Laxman
Gopalakrishna Adiga
U. R. Ananthamurthy
Places
Mysore Airport
Kingdom of Mysore
Mysore Zoo
Tourist attractions
Authority control
WorldCat Identities
BIBSYS: 90071352
BNE: XX945193
BNF: cb11917408m (data)
CiNii: DA05106803
GND: 118835599
ISNI: 0000 0001 2147 8976
LCCN: n79141285
LNB: 000098663
NDL: 00515189
NKC: jn19990006022
NLA: 36189508
ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\110781
SELIBR: 249407
SNAC: w6wq1v36
SUDOC: 027647919
VIAF: 111543455
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R._K._Narayan&oldid=851613604"
Categories:
R. K. Narayan
1906 births
2001 deaths
Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha
English-language writers from India
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Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in literature & education
Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan in literature & education
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Tamil writers
Maharaja's College, Mysore alumni
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20th-century Indian novelists
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