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R.K. Narayan is the pioneer of Indo anglian Literature, if you like it or not. There are other folks like GV Desabi and Mulk Raj Anand. But they didn't had as much influence as Narayan had in the west. By the help of British author Graham Greene (he helped him publish Swami and Friends), he had catapulted the Indoanglian fiction to a new height. I first read Narayan when I was in the eight standard and the first novel was The World of Nagaraj. Now I am in the 12th standard and I have read all his Malgudi based novels except for The Dark Room which I could not find in the book shops of Kathmandu. I have even read some of his short stories, essays and short pieces.

Reading some of the articles after his death whcih were meant to be obituary I came to know that Narayan was not that sort of person you would prefer to be in company with. His grumpy face in the last photograph taken of him (in India Today), says it all. The article on Narayan by Sir VS Naipaul was also very good.

No matter whether he was a gay (from the above post) or person who blew his own trumpets (he said on his America's trip that he is the world's best writer after Faulkner and Hemingway), to me he is a master story teller ie a person who had the ability to hold you in awe with his skill in story telling.

Please people do post any comments on my forum dedicated solely to Indoanglian Literature. http://forum.onecenter.com/indolit/

Or, visit my page on RK Narayan at http://www.rigzin.freeservers.com/rknarayan.htm