The English Teacher - Softcover

R.K. Narayan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749397276 ISBN 13: 9780749397272

Publisher: Minerva, 1993

Synopsis

This novel completes the informal trilogy which began with Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts . The protagonist, Krishna, is an English teacher at the same college he had attended as a student. Although Krishna has recently married, his wife Susila and their daughter live with his parents-in-law some miles away. The story opens with his immediate family deciding to join him in Malgudi. Krishna is initially frightened by his new state of affairs, but he soon finds that his love for both his wife and child grows deeper than he could have imagined."Mr. Narayan has repeatedly been compared with Chekhov. Ordinarily such comparisons are gratuitous and strained, but in this case there are such clear and insistent echoes that any careful reader will be aware of them. There is that sense of rightness which transcends mere structure. There is the inexplicable blending of tragedy and humor. Most of all, there is a brooding awareness of fate which makes the story seem not authored, but merely translated."—J.F. Muehl, Saturday Review"[Narayan] does not deal in exemplary fates, and the Western novel's machinery of retribution is far too grandiose for him. . . . In Narayan's world, scores are not settled but dissolved, recycled, restated. 'Both of us will shed our forms soon and perhaps we could meet again, who knows? So goodbye for the present.' These are the concluding words for the novel A Tiger for Malgudi , but they constitute a universal epilogue one could append to most of Narayan's fiction."—Russell Davies, Times Literary Supplement

About this title

About the Author

R. K. Narayan (1906–2001) was one of the most prominent Indian novelists of the twentieth century. Most of his stories are set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi, a place that Narayan populated with numerous characters. He was the recipient of many awards for his work including the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, India's highest literary honor. In 1980 he was awarded the AC Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature, of which he was an honorary member and in 1982 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Review

"Narayan wakes in me a spring of gratitude, for he has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian" * Graham Greene * "Narayan's humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imaginary township of Malgudi into a bubbling parish of the world" * Observer * "In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov" * Sunday Telegraph * "RK Narayan's Malgudi novels are humorous gems and it is a great pity that they are not better known. He wrote beautifully and with great compassion, something regrettably lacking in some humorous writing" -- Alexander McCall Smith "An idyll as delicious as anything I have met in modern literature for a long time. The atmosphere and texture of happiness, and, above all, its elusiveness, have seldom been so perfectly transcribed." -- Elizabeth Bowen

Edition details

• Publisher: Minerva
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0749397276
• ISBN 13: 9780749397272
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256