The World of Nagaraj - Softcover

Narayan, R.K. (1906-2001)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749305312 ISBN 13: 9780749305314

Publisher: London : Mandarin, 1991

Synopsis

Nagaraj's world is quite and comfortable. Living in his family's spacious house with only his wife Sita for company, he fills his day writing letters, drinking coffee, doing some leisurely book keeping for his friend Coomar's Boeing Sari Company, and sitting on his veranda watching the world and planning the book he intends to write about the life of the great sage Narada. But everything is disturbed when Tim, the son of his ambitious landowing brother Gopu, decides to leave home and come to live with Nagaraj. Forced to take responsibility for the boy, puzzled by his secret late-night activities and by the strong smell of sprits which lingers behind him, Nagaraj finds his days, suddenly filled with unwelcome complication and turbulence, which threaten to alter for ever the contented tranquility of his world. The latest of R.K.Narayan's magnificent Malgudi books, The World of Nagaraj is beautifully written, funny and haunting , evoking in marvelously rich detail the atmosphere of a small town in southern India and creating a magical world into which the reader is instantly drawn.

About this title

From Library Journal

In this, the 14th of his well-known Malgudi novels (e.g., Talkative Man , LJ 2/1/87), Narayan takes us into the daily routine of 50-year-old Nagaraj, who peacefully lives and acts inside his thoughts and whose associations with his family and friends are usually peripheral. Nagaraj perpetually dreams of writing the definitive treatise on the Sanskrit sage, Narada, yet he never studies Sanskrit. Though his story is told with much sensitivity and deft humor, he ultimately becomes a tragic figure defeated by his own character traits--a symbol of all humanity, whose dreams can never become reality because of inherent weaknesses. Nagaraj is supremely accurate in his depiction of an India that is a paradox of contrasts--of wealth and squalor, elegance and poverty, beauty and disease, erudition and ignorance--yet he wondrously renders Nagaraj's little world to represent the entire big world where we love and strive, unable to see that we are primarily responsible for our own lives.
- Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

The fictional town of Malgudi, India, is home to tranquil Nagaraj, whose daily routine of religious ritual and study of a Sanskrit scholar's oeuvre is unsettled by the arrival of his modern nephew. "The Malgudi residents are talkative, philosophical and able to confront events with wonder and humor," said PW. "Narayan captures the rhythm of generally contented lives."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: London : Mandarin
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0749305312
• ISBN 13: 9780749305314
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186