Critical Essays on R.K. Narayan's The Guide

Critical Essays on R.K. Narayan's The Guide
Author: Krishna Sen
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN: 9788125025177

The essays in this book have been divided into two sections. The first section examines one of Narayn's major works, The Guide. The essays here discuss the genesis of the novel, narrative structure, use of language, humour and irony in the novel, the characters, and also the post-colonial quality of The Guide. The second section situates The Guide within the larger context of Narayan's life and works, Narayan as a novelist, themes and characters in his novels, Narayan's Malgudi, and Narayan as an Indian English writer. These essays will be essential reading for students who study The Guide, and also Narayan's works as a whole.

Critical Essays

Critical Essays
Author: Amar Nath Prasad
Publisher: Sarup & Sons
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2003
Genre: Indic literature (English)
ISBN: 9788176253345

My Dateless Diary

My Dateless Diary
Author: R K Narayan
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2000-10-14
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 8184758626

An unusual and witty travel book about the United States of America. At the age of fifty, when most people have settled for the safety of routine, R. K. Narayan left India for the first time to travel through America. In this account of his journey, the writer’s pen unerringly captures the clamour and energy of New York city, the friendliness of the West Coast, the wealth and insularity of the Mid-West, the magnificence of the Grand Canyon...Threading their way through the narrative are a host of delightful characters—from celebrities like Greta Garbo, Aldous Huxley, Martha Graham, Cartier Bresson, Milton Singer, Edward G. Robinson and Ravi Shankar to the anonymous business tycoon on the train who dismissed the writer when he discovered Narayan had nothing to do with India’s steel industry. As a bonus, there are wry snapshots of those small but essential aspects of American life—muggers, fast food restaurants, instant gurus, subway commuters, TV advertisements, and American football. An entrancing and compelling travelogue about an endlessly fascinating land.

R. K. Narayan

R. K. Narayan
Author: John Thieme
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847795366

R.K. Narayan’s reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English is re-examined in this comprehensive study of his fiction, which offers detailed readings of all his novels. Arguing against views that have seen Narayan as a chronicler of “authentic” Indianness, John Thieme locates his fiction in terms of its specific South Indian contexts and cultural geography and its non-Indian intertexts. The study also considers the effect that Narayan’s writing for overseas publication had on novels such as Swami and Friends, The Guide and The Man-Eater of Malgudi. Narayan’s imaginary small town of Malgudi has often been seen as a metonym for India. Thieme draws on recent thinking about the ways in which place and space are constructed to demonstrate that Malgudi is always a fractured and transitional site, an interface between older conceptions of Indianness and contemporary views that stress the ubiquitousness and inescapability of change in the face of modernity. The study also shows that Malgudi is seen from varying angles of vision and with shifting emphases at different points in Narayan’s career. As well as offering fresh insights into the influences that went into the making of Narayan’s fiction, this is the most wide-ranging and authoritative guide to his novels to have appeared to date. It provides a unique account of his development as a writer.

Guide, The (Modern Classics)

Guide, The (Modern Classics)
Author: R.K. Narayan
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2010-12
Genre:
ISBN: 0143414984

‘The best of R.K. Narayan’s enchanting novels’—The New Yorker Raju, a corrupt tourist guide, together with his lover, the dancer Rosie, leads a prosperous life before he is thrown into prison. After release he rests on the steps of an abandoned temple when a peasant passing by mistakes him for a holy man. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he begins to play the part, acting as a spiritual guide to the village community. Raju’s holiness is put to the test when a drought strikes the village, and he is asked to fast for twelve days to summon the rains. Set in Narayan’s fictional town, Malgudi, The Guide is the greatest of his comedies of self-deception. ‘A brilliant accomplishment … Narayan is the compassionate man who can write of human life as comedy’—The New York Times Book Review ‘Narayan is such a natural writer, so true to his experience and emotions’—V.S. Naipaul

Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days
Author: R. K. Narayan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006-08-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1440674639

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.

Writer's Nightmare

Writer's Nightmare
Author: R K Narayan
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2000-10-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 8184750765

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.

R . K. Narayan

R . K. Narayan
Author: SARBANI PUTATUNDA
Publisher: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2012-02-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 8120345363

Today, Indian Writing in English or Indo-Anglian Writing has certainly come of age, with the novel having a pride of place and names such as Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga prominently figuring in the list. But the credit for placing Indo-Anglian writing on a high pedestal should go to earlier writers like Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao. Among these, R.K. Narayan is the most celebrated novelist. This edited volume deals with several important Malgudi novels of R.K. Narayan, such as Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The English Teacher and The Guide and short stories, and throws light on various aspects of his creative art. It traces the evolution of all the genres of Indian Writing in English as well as R.K. Narayan the novelist. The book dwells upon R.K. Narayan’s art of characterization with reference to central male characters, use of humour, and the cultural milieu of Malgudi. It also discusses in detail R.K. Narayan’s standpoint regarding the actual social status of Indian women. Finally, the book focuses on R.K. Narayan’s use of myths and symbols and shows how these enable him to convey artistically the implication of the experience that forms the base of the novels. The book is meant for the undergraduate and postgraduate students of English Literature. Besides, all those readers who wish to delve deeper into the works of R.K. Narayan will find the book quite useful.

Coolie

Coolie
Author: Mulk Raj Anand
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1994
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780140186802

Coolie portrays the picaresque adventures of Munoo, a young boy forced to leave his hill village to fend for himself and discover the world. His journey takes him far from home to towns and cities, to Bombay and Simla, sweating as servant, factory-worker and rickshaw driver. It is a fight for survival that illuminates, with raw immediacy, the grim fate of the masses in pre-Partition India.