Waiting For Mahatma
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“There are writers—Tolstoy and Henry James to name two—whom we hold in awe, writers—Turgenev and Chekhov—for whom we feel a personal affection, other writers whom we respect—Conrad, for example—but who hold us at a long arm’s length with their ‘courtly foreign grace.’ Narayan (whom I don’t hesitate to name in such a context) more than any of them wakes in me a spring of gratitude, for he has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian.”—Graham Greene
“R. K. Narayan...has been compared to Gogol in England, where he has acquired a well-deserved reputation. The comparison is apt, for Narayan, an Indian, is a writer of Gogol’s stature, with the same gift for creating a provincial atmosphere in a time of change....One is convincingly involved in this alien world without ever being aware of the technical devices Narayan so brilliantly employs.”—Anthony West, The New Yorker
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R. K. Narayan (born Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, 10 October 1906 - 13 May 2001) was an award-winning Indian writer, best 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.
Some of his best-known works include Swami and Friends (1935), in which he first introduces the fictional town of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, hailed as one of the most original works of 1951, and The Guide (1958), which earned him the Sahitya Akademi and which was adapted for film and Broadway.
Narayan highlighted the social context and everyday life of his characters and has been compared to William Faulkner, who also created a similar fictional town, and explored with humour and compassion the energy of ordinary life.
In a career that spanned over sixty years, Narayan received many awards and honours. His first major award was the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide in 1958. When the book was made into a film, he received the Filmfare Award for the best story. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds (1967), the University of Mysore (1976) and Delhi University (1973).
Narayan died in 2001 aged 94.
