Kirjahaku

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 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.

Chandran is a good-natured, popular, rather dreamy student who works hard to pass his exams. 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.

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. 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.

The sleeping giant of India is beginning to stir to the dwelling reverberations which herald the great struggle for independence. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Discover one of India's most valued and adored twentieth-century novelists, including his novel Swami and Friends. Here are three of R. Narayan's most famous and best loved novels: Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher.

'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

My Days is the only memoir from R.K. Narayan, one of the twentieth century's most important writers in the English language. This edition includes a foreword by John Updike. In the wryly funny style that has made him famous, R.K. Narayan shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother's garden in Madras with a ferocious pet peacock. As a young boy with no interest in school he trains grasshoppers and scouts and then, against the advice of all, especially his commanding headmaster father, the dreaming Narayan begins to write fiction. When one of his pieces is accepted by Punch magazine, what he describes as his 'first prestige publication', his life becomes gradually filled with bumbling British diplomats, strange movie moguls, evasive Indian officials and 'the blind urge' to fall in love. Like his fiction R.K. Narayan's memoirs are acutely perceptive of the human condition, often brilliantly funny and always forgiving.