R. K. Narayan (1906–2001,) fully Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, was an Indian novelist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as India’s most celebrated writer in English of the 20th century.
Narayan wrote with sophistication, humor, and gentle irony in his adopted language. His best-known novels are set in the imaginary small South Indian town of Malgudi, a microcosmic portrayal of India. Narayan described Malgudi’s inhabitants with a characteristic blend of comedy and tragedy, tradition, and social satire. They wrestle to adapt traditional Indian middle-class values with Western ways that they inherited from the British during the Raj.
Born in Madras, Narayan was the son of a headmaster. After graduating from Maharaja’s College, Mysore, he became a teacher in a small village school, a setting that he found so constricting that he turned to write. Among his successful novels are Swami and Friends (1935,) The Guide (1958,) The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961,) and The Painter of Signs (1977.)
Narayan also wrote a large number of short stories and published them in such titles as Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985) and The Grandmother’s Tale and Other Stories (1993.) He wrote the autobiography My Days (1975) and edited abridged prose versions of the Hindu epics Rāmāyaṇa (1973) and Mahabharata (1978.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by R. K. Narayan
If you threw a stone into a gutter, it would only spurt filth in your face.
—R. K. Narayan
The unbeaten brat will remain unlearned.
—R. K. Narayan
The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.
—R. K. Narayan
We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts.
—R. K. Narayan
Knowledge, like food, must be taken within limits. You must know only as much as you need, and not more.
—R. K. Narayan
When one is seized with a passion to understand one’s self, one has to leave behind all normal life and habitual modes of thought.
—R. K. Narayan
No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it.
—R. K. Narayan
Society presses upon us all the time. The progress of the last half century is the progress of the frog out of his well.
—R. K. Narayan
Do you realize how few ever really understand how fortunate they are in their circumstances?
—R. K. Narayan
It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.
—R. K. Narayan
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