A Malgudi Omnibus

R. K. Narayan is one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists. He takes his place alongside Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen and Chekhov in the pantheon of twentieth-century greats

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

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

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

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

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.

Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of the colourful teeming that Narayan's fictional city of Malgudi conveys

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

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.

Discover one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists, including his novel Swami and Friends. 
 
Here are three of R. K. Narayan's most famous and best loved novels: Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. All set in the imaginary Indian town of Malgudi, these irresistible works provide the perfect introduction to a universal world of humour, sadness, wisdom and joy. 
 
 **Featuring one of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher

R K Narayan Omnibus Volume 1

The four novels collected here, all written during British rule, bring colonial India into intimate focus through the narrative gifts of this master of literary realism.

Narayan 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.

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.

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.

R. K. Narayan (1906-2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. Swami and Friends introduces us to Narayan's beloved fictional town of Malgudi, where ten-year-old Swaminathan's excitement about his country's initial stirrings for independence competes with his ardour for cricket and all other things British. The Bachelor of Arts is a poignant coming-of-age novel about a young man flush with first love, but whose freedom to pursue it is hindered by the fixed ideas of his traditional Hindu family. In The Dark Room, Narayan's portrait of aggrieved domesticity, the docile and obedient Savitri, like many Malgudi women, is torn between submitting to her husband's humiliations and trying to escape them. The title character in The English Teacher, Narayan's most autobiographical novel, searches for meaning when the death of his young wife deprives him of his greatest source of happiness.

Mr Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma

R K Narayan Omnibus Volume 2

In the novels of R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), the forefather of Indian fiction, we witness the birth of a nation as it awakens to its place in the world. The three novels brought together in this volume, all written after India's independence, are masterpieces of social comedy, rich in local colour and abounding in affectionate humour and generosity of spirit.

Mr Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi is the story of a businessman who adapts to the collapse of his weekly newspaper by shifting to screenplays, only to have the glamour of it all go to his head. In The Financial Expert, a man of many hopes but few resources spends his time under a banyan tree dispensing financial advice to those willing to pay for his knowledge. In Waiting for the Mahatma, a young drifter meets the most beautiful girl he has ever seen - an adherent of Mahatma Gandhi - and commits himself to Gandhi's Quit India campaign, a decision that will test the integrity of his ideals against the strength of his passions.

The Financial Expert

Keynote/Publisher's Comments'The novelist I admire most in the English language' Graham Greene

In the shade of a banyan tree sits Margayva, self-styled advisor on the complex minor transactions which are an integral part of Indian life. Who else would you consult if you wanted a loan from the local Co-operative Bank?But a scrape with officialdom in the form of an unplanned interview with the Bank's Secretary - and a mishap which finds his spoilt son Balu throwing his accounts book down a drain - temporarily cuts short a lucrative career.

Gods Demons And Others

'R K Narayan is one of those writers who not only creates literature but reaffirms its relevance to everyday life' Financial Times

RK 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, something regrettably lacking in some humorous writing

Assuming the character of a wise village storyteller, R K Narayan sits in the cool of an imaginary evening to recount the tales of the centuries.Taken from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and other Indian epics, the gods and demons, saints and sinners assume their symbolic and philosophical roles without ever losing their human characteristics. It is a measure of the author's achievement that he so subtly imbues them with his own distinctive wit and vision.This book is illustrated throughout by Narayan's brother R K Laxman, with woodcuts based on temple carvings.

The Bachelor Of Arts

Chandran is a good-natured, popular, rather dreamy student who works hard to pass his exams. Newly graduated, he is unsure how he wants to spend his future. And then, one evening, walking by the river, he sees Malathi, a beautiful young girl dressed in a radiant green sari  But the course of love does not run smoothly. Not all is well in Chandran's horoscope and while some customs can be forgotten, others must be strictly observed: customs that temporarily cause Chandran to turn his back on the legendary Malgudi altogether.

Waiting For The Mahatma

R. K. Narayan's novels are like a box of Indian sweets: a highly-coloured container conceals a range of delectable treats, all different in a subtle way, but each one clearly from the same place. There are fourteen novels in the oeuvre-enough to create a world. Enthusiasts of his work will read them all and return to them time and again. The busy, or the less committed, may open the box and take out one at random-it does not really matter which order one reads them in. But be warned: the consumption of one leads to a strong craving for more

Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

The first that indolent young Sriram knows about Mahatma Ghandi's visit to Malgudi is when a collection box is waved beneath his nose by the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. The vision's name is Bharato. Capable and quick-witted, her scorn for her gauche but ardent admirer is almost equal to her devotion to the Mahatma. Yet that is how Sriram leaves Malgudi to become a passionate apostle of the Quit India campaign - only to find his convictions tested by the rigours of a prison cell.

Swami And Friends

Ten-year-old Swaminathan is living in exciting times. The sleeping giant of India is beginning to stir to the dwelling reverberations which herald the great struggle for independence. But it's all rather confusing for the boy. For like his family and friends, Swami has been immutably moulded by his British rulers - and though he might happily demonstrate against them, he wouldn't dream of missing cricket practice.

Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi,The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma and The World of Nagaraj

More Tales From Malgudi

KEY POINTS: * A companion volume to A Malgudi Omnibus which Minerva published in 1994 and features three other Malgudi novels. * A wonderful collection of novels gathered together in one stunning reader friendly volume. * Narayan has a wide fan base and is recognised as a major writer- a Nobel Prize candidate. * Published as part of the Indian Summer Promotion campaign. * 'The novelist I most admire in the English language' - Graham Green.

THE BOOK: This omnibus edition features four books from R. K. Narayan's famous series based in the imaginary Indian town of Malgudi: The World of Nagaraj, Mr Sampath-Printer of Malgudi, Waiting for the Mahatma and The Financial Expert. Each of these novels demonstrates Narayan's rare talent and extraordinary gifts and are confirmed of his status as a major international writer.

The Grandmother's Tale

'In the title story of this collection of marvellous stories, the narrator, a novelist, sits at the elbow of his grandmother as she tells of how her mother, betrothed at seven years old, had to pursue her runaway "husband" halfway across the subcontinent.In "Guru", a corrupt, grasping official gets his comeuppance, not so much because he is crooked but because he fails to honour a financial pledge made to his daughters-in-law.In "Salt and Sawdust", when a young woman embarks on a career as a novelist the characters are again made to tread the commercial fault lines between cordiality and aloofness ... From such nerve endings are the making of humour, sadness, wisdom and joy' Observer 
 
'Narayan, the creator of the imaginary small town of Malgudi, is undoubtedly the most brilliant exponent of the fiction, as well as the friction, of intimacy ... Anthony Burgess has compared him to Chekhov.One might also compare him with those other masters of small worlds, John McGahern and Isaac Singer.That there is argument over his literary allegiances is proof of the universality of his intelligent charm' Sunday Times 
 
'A storyteller of a high order ... It is as wise as it is funny' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Irresistibly readable' The Herald

R K Narayan

Narayan 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

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

In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov

Revisiting it at the age of 40 I find in it so many beautiful and moving things... In Narayan's hands even the torture of the mind is so untortured; the conversations and descriptions so unadorned as to give the impression of words flowing like blood or air through one's body

Krishna, an English teacher in the town of Malgudi, nagged by the feeling he's doing the wrong work, is nonetheless delighted by his domestic life, where his wife and young daughter wait for him outside the house every afternoon. Devastated by the death of his wife, Krishna comes to realise what he really wants to do, and makes a decision that will change his life forever.

The English Teacher

About us

R K Narayan

Praise for The English Teacher

Narayan 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

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

In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov

Narayan 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

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

In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov

Narayan 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

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

In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov

Books by R K Narayan

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