THE VERY BEST OF R .K.NARAYAN TIMELESS MALGUDI

Over a career spanning seven
decades, R.K. Narayan, easily one of the most influential and important
writers of India, populated the fictional town of Malgudi with a host of
unforgettable characters: Swami and his gang of friends, the Talkative Man,
Raju the guide and Sampath the printer, among many others. These characters
have carved out a place for themselves in popular imagination and live on,
still fresh and endlessly entertaining, many decades after they first
appeared.Timeless Malgudi brings together a selection of the best and the
most enduring of R.K. Narayan’s fiction and nonfiction. The Guide examines,
with wit and irony, how a man becomes a godman. The story ‘A Horse and Two
Goats’ describes an attempt at crosscultural communication which goes
haywire, with hilarious consequences. The excerpt from My Days, Narayan’s
autobiography, paints a poignant picture of the author’s childhood while the
‘Misguided Guide’ is a cynical, sharply written chronicle of the making of
the film Guide, based on his novel. Also included in this volume are excerpts
from the travelogue My Dateless Diary and a brilliant retelling of the Tamil
epic Silappadikaram.Catering both to Narayan aficionados and to readers who
have not yet been introduced to his work, Timeless Malgudi is as much a
showcase of Narayan’s writing as it is a celebration of Malgudi, the town
which time does not touch.