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R.K. Narayan’s immense literary oeuvre comprises novels, novellas, short stories, travelogues, and film scripts. In a career spanning over six decades, the creator of Malgudi received, notably, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan.

Drawing upon his five decades of sustained interest and research on Narayan, and his own experience as a writer, Ranga Rao offers in this volume detailed critical analyses of Narayan’s fifteen novels and novellas. Through the lens of the three gunas in Indian philosophy, Rao traces Narayan’s shift from sattvic comedies to rajasic and tamasic ones, thereby charting the growth of the author himself-from styling himself as a realistic fiction writer to carving for himself a niche in the field of literature.

Rao embellishes his critique with rich annotations, offering numerous facts and filiations, drawn from critics as well as friends and relatives of Narayan. This volume stands out as a definitive study of one of the most prominent authors of early Indian literature in English.