The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

Overview

R. K. Narayan (1906—2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. The title character in The English Teacher, Narayan’s most autobiographical novel, searches for meaning when the death of his young wife deprives him of his greatest source of happiness. This pioneering novel, luminous in its detail and refreshingly free of artifice, is a gift to twentieth-century literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345803825
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/25/2012
Series:	Vintage International
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), born and educated in India, was the author of 14 novels, numerous short stories and essays, a memoir, and three retold myths. His work, championed by Graham Greene (who became a close friend), was often compared to that of Dickens, Chekhov, Faulkner, and O'Connor, among others.

Editorial Reviews

"(Narayan) does not deal in exemplary fates, and the Western novels machinery of retribution is far too grandeouse for him....In Narayan's world, scores are not settled by 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 of the novel A Tiger for Malgudi, but they constitute a universal epilog one could have been most of Narayan's fiction." -- Times Literary Supplement

Russell Davies

"Mr. Narayan has repeatedly been compared with Chekov. Ordinarily such comparisons are gratutious and strained, but in this case there are such clear and insistent echoes that any careful reader will be aware of them. It leaves that sense of rightness which transends mere structure. There is the inexplicable blending of tragedy and humour. Most of all, there is a brooding awareness of fate which makes the story seem not altered, but merely transcribed." -- Saturday Review

J.S. Muehl