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Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan (October 10, 1906 – May 13, 2001) was an Indian novelist. He had his early schooling in Madras, but moved to Mysore when his father was appointed Head Master of the Maharaja’s high school there, and got his bachelors’ degree from the University of Mysore. Most of his work, starting from his first novel Swami and friends (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which at the same time captures everything Indian while having a unique identity of its own. One of the few Indian-English writers spending nearly all his time in India, he went abroad to the USA in 1956 at the invitation of the Rockfeller Foundation. He began his literary career with short stories which appeared in The Hindu, and also worked for some time as the Mysore correspondent of Justice, a Madras-based newspaper
Many of Narayan’s works are rooted in everyday life, though he is not shy of invoking Hindu tales or traditional Indian folklore to emphasize a point. His easy-going outlook on life has sometimes been criticized, though in general he is viewed as an accomplished, sensitive and reasonably prolific writer.
List of his major works (in chronological order) :
Swami and Friends, 1935
Bachelor of Arts, 1937
The Dark Room, 1938
The English Teacher, 1945
An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories, 1947
Mr. Sampath – The Printer of Malgudi, 1949
The Financial Expert, 1952
Grateful to Life and Death, 1953
Waiting for the Mahatma, 1955
Lawley Road and Other Stories, 1956
The Guide, 1958, made into a Hindi movie by Dev Anand
Next Sunday : sketches and essays, 1960
The Man-Eater of Malgudi, 1961
My Dateless Diary, 1964
Gods, Demons, and Other Stories, 1965
The Vendor of Sweets, 1967
A Horse and two Goats, and Other stories, 1970
The Ramayana; a shortened modern prose version, 1972
My Days, 1974
The Painter of Signs, 1976
Reluctant Guru, 1974
The Mahabharata: a shortened modern prose version, 1978
The Emerald Route, 1980
Malgudi Days, 1982
A Tiger for Malgudi, 1983
Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, 1985
The Talkative Man, 1986
A Story-Teller’s World: Stories, Essays, Sketches, 1989
The World of Nagaraj, 1990
Salt and Sawdust , ?
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