World Of Malgudi

0.0

This is R.K. Narayan’s classic chronicle of the adventures of a boy named Swami, and his friends Rajam and Mani, in a sleepy and picturesque South Indian town called Malgudi. Swami’s days are full of action—when he is not creating a ruckus in the classroom or preparing in his inimitable way for exams, he’s trying to acquire a hoop from the coachman’s son to run down the Malgudi streets, playing tricks on his grandmother, or stoning the school windows, inspired by a swadeshi demonstration. But the greatest feat of Swami and his friends lies in putting together a cricket team for the ‘MCC’ (the Malgudi Cricket Club) and challenging the neighbouring Young Men’s Union to a match. Just before the match, however, things go horribly, horribly wrong, and Swami has no option but to run away from home, wanting never to return to Malgudi again . . . Malgudi Schooldays is a brilliantly evocative and delightfully funny account of the growing-up years from one of the greatest English language writers of our time. Includes a slightly abridged version of the novel Swami and Friends along with two other Swami stories, available together for the first time Features fifteen black-and-white illustrations by R.K. Laxman,Attractive design, The first in a series of Indian literature classics on the Puffin list.

0.0

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and educated there and at Maharaja’s College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan’s work The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country’s highest literary honor. In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Narayan died in 2001.