R.K. Narayan

This is a definitive study of the novelist R.K. Narayan and his art. Drawing upon his five decades of sustained interest and research on Narayan and his own experience as a novelist and short-story writer, Ranga Rao offers detailed critical analyses of Narayan’s fifteen novels and novellas, all of which are widely prescribed and studied in schools, colleges, and universities across the world; some of these works, especially the five ‘pre-Independence’ novels, Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher, and Mr. Sampath, are grossly underrated and misinterpreted by reputed critics and writers, like V.S. Naipaul. Ranga Rao concludes his study by positing a new conception of comedy called ‘gunas comedy’. He also postscripts his critique with wide-ranging notes, offering facts and filiations aplenty, drawn from critics as well as friends and interviewers of Narayan, and also from the novelist’s own non-fictional work. The detailed bibliography at the end of the book will prove a boon to those studying postcolonial literatures as well as the works of Narayan.

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