"I wish you a speedy recovery. I do not know what happened that night. Some foul play, somewhere. The rogue who brought me the Coca-Cola must have drugged the drink. I will deal with him yet". These haunting tales from India's foremost storyteller, set in the fictional town of Malgudi, are filled with characters from every walk of life. Avaricious merchants, fleshy harlots, foolhardy teachers, beggars and rogues are all observed in minute detail, their stories told with great compassion, wisdom and wry, mischievous humour. This book includes "A Breath of Lucifer", "House Opposite", "The Watchman", "Another Community", "Like the Sun", "Uncle's Letters", "Fruition at Forty" and "Half a Rupee's Worth".
Author
R. K. Narayan is among the best known and most widely read Indian novelists who wrote in English. R.K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and educated there and at Maharaja's College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan's work The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor. In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Most of Narayan's work, starting with his first novel Swami and Friends (1935), captures many Indian traits while retaining a unique identity of its own. He was sometimes compared to the American writer William Faulkner, whose novels were also grounded in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life. Narayan who lived till age of ninety-four, died in 2001. He wrote for more than fifty years, and published until he was eighty seven. He wrote fourteen novels, five volumes of short stories, a number of travelogues and collections of non-fiction, condensed versions of Indian epics in English, and the memoir My Days. -Wikipedia & Amazon.co.uk
