Waiting for the Mahatma

by R. K. Narayan

Overview

In the novels of R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), the forefather of modern Indian fiction, human-scale hopes and epiphanies express the promise of a nation as it awakens to its place in the world. In Waiting for the Mahatma, a young drifter meets the most beautiful girl he has ever seen–an adherent of Mahatma Gandhi–and commits himself to Gandhi’s Quit India campaign, a decision that will test the integrity of his ideals against the strength of his passions. This novel, written after India's independence, is a masterpiece of social comedy, rich in local color and abounding in affectionate humor and generosity of spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345803856
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.

What People are Saying About This

Graham Greene

There are writers—Tolstoy and Henry James to name two—whom we hold in awe, writers—Turgenev and Chekhov—for whom we feel a personal affection, other writers whom we respect—Conrad, for example—but who hold us at arms length with their 'courtly foreign grace.' Narayan (whom I don't hesitate to name in such a context) more than any of them 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.

J.A.B. van Buitenen

R.K. Narayan has for several decades been the best Indian writer in English. From year to year I have had a hope that he will be awarded a Nobel Prize. That may still happen.

Editorial Reviews

The hardest of all things for a novelist to communicate is the extraordinary ordinariness of most human happiness…Jane Austen, Soseki, Chekhov: a few bring it off. Narayan is one of them.
—Francis King, Spectator

Francis King

R.K. Narayan…has been compared to Gogol in England, where he has acquired a well—deserved reputation. The comparison is apt for Narayan, an Indian, is a writer of Gogol's stature, with the same gift for creating a provincial atmosphere in a time of change…one is convincingly involved in this alien world without ever being aware of the technical devices Narayan so brilliantly employs.
—Anthony West, The New Yorker

Anthony West

The experience of reading one of his novels is…comparable to one's first reaction to the great Russian novels: the fresh realization of the common humanity of all peoples, underlain by a simultaneous sense of strangeness—like one's own reflection seen in a green twilight.
—Margaret Parton, New York Herald Tribune Book Review

Margaret Parton

The novels of R.K. Narayan are the best I have read in any language for a long time.
—Amit Roy, Daily Telegraph

Amit Roy