R.K. Narayan occupies centre stage among Indian English writers of the twentieth century, with fifteen novels and novellas and more than half a dozen collections of short stories to his credit. He was the first Indian writer in English to win the Sahitya Akademi Award (1958). This work is a definitive study of the man and the writer. Ranga Rao presents an intimate picture of Narayan, based on his personal experiences with the Narayan himself and his friends and relatives. Rao does detailed critical analyses of all of Narayan's novels and novellas, reading them through the lens of the Indian philosophical concept of the three 'gunas' (quality or virtue): 'sattvic' (harmonious), 'rajasic' (passionate), and 'tamasic' (chaotic). Ranga Rao post-scripts his critique with wide-ranging endnotes, offering plenty of facts and filiations, drawn from critics as well as friends and interviewers of Narayan, and from the novelist's own non-fictional works.

About the Author
Ranga Rao is a visiting faculty member at the Department of English, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Puttaparthi, India. He has earlier taught at Sri Venkateswara College in New Delhi, India. Besides creative and critical works, he has also compiled, edited, and translated anthologies.


Book Information
ISBN 9780199470754
Author Ranga Rao
Format Hardback
Page Count 344
Imprint OUP India
Publisher OUP India