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R. K. Narayan's writing spans the greatest period of change in modern Indian history, from the days of the Raj with Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts (1937) and The English Teacher (1945), to recent years of political unrest - The Painter of Signs (1976), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), and Talkative Man (1987). He has published numerous collections of short stories, including Malgudi Days (1982) and Under the Banyan Tree (1985), and several works of non-fiction. His final work was The Grandmother's Tale: Three Novellas (1993). R. K. Narayan died in 2001.
Narayan's humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imagery township of Malgudi into a bubbling parish of the world Observer The hardest of all things for a novelist to communicate is the extraordinary ordinariness of human happiness. Jane Austen, Soskei, Chekhov; a few bring it off. Narayan is one of them Spectator No writer is more deceptively casual, or less fussed about the Eternal Verities, or more unerring in arriving by delightful detours at his destination - which is seldom a terminus because life keeps bobbing on Guardian R K Narayan's Malgudi novels are humorous gems and it is a great pity that they are not better known. He wrote beautifully and with great compassion. -- Alexander McCall Smith Guardian
