A Malgudi Omnibus

Every literature student should have space on her shelf for the complete works of R K Narayan. Or at least for a Malgudi omnibus, the fictional town in which he set many of his novels – Monica Ali * Guardian *
Narayan’s humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imaginary 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 *
Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of the colourful teeming that Narayan’s fictional city of Malgudi conveys – John Updike
An idyll as delicious as anything I have met in modern literature for a long time. The atmosphere and texture of happiness, and, above all, its elusiveness, have seldom been so perfectly transcribed – Elizabeth Bowen

R K Narayan’s writing spans the greatest period of change in modern Indian history, from the days of the Raj - 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.

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