Contents
R. K. Narayan
Creating Malgudi, the fictional Indian town at the heart of Swami and Friends and The Guide.
Swami and Friends · The English Teacher
- Born
- 10 October 1906
- Birthplace
- Madras, British India (now Chennai, India)
- Died
- 13 May 2001
More people
R. K. Narayan
R. K. Narayan wrote in English about ordinary lives in a closely observed South Indian setting. His gentle humour leaves room for ambition, disappointment and moral uncertainty rather than reducing his characters to lessons.
Early life
A grandmother’s household
He spent part of his Madras childhood with his grandmother while his schoolmaster father’s work moved the family between places.
Reading in Mysore
Libraries and an appetite for fiction supported his education. After university and a brief teaching job, he chose writing as a career.
Career
- 1935
Malgudi appears
Swami and Friends introduced the town that would connect much of his fiction; Graham Greene helped secure publication.
- 1940s–1950s
An expanding fictional world
Stories and novels explored teachers, businessmen, families and small-town ambitions.
- 1958–1960
The Guide
The novel’s success brought the Sahitya Akademi Award for English in 1960.
- 1970s–1990s
Retelling and reflection
He published retellings of Indian epics, memoirs and further Malgudi fiction.
Selected work
Swami and Friends
School, friendship and adult authority are seen through a boy’s experiences.
The English Teacher
A teacher’s domestic life and bereavement lead into questions of spiritual connection.
The Guide
A tourist guide’s transformation into a supposed holy man leaves belief and deception uneasily intertwined.
Beyond work
A cartoonist brother
His younger brother R. K. Laxman became one of India’s best-known cartoonists and illustrated some of his work.
A personal loss
His wife Rajam died young. The experience strongly informed the emotional world of The English Teacher.
Sources & photo credit
Life and career ↗Institutional or specialist reference ↗Photo: India Post, Government of India. GODL-India · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
