R. K. Narayan

Sudeshna Kar Barua (Independent Scholar - Asia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.1.03: Indian Writing and Culture: Post-colonial, 1947-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

Born 10 Oct 1906
Died 13 May 2001
Activity 1926-1999

Places

Born in India
Active in India

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Narayan's Works

Save to Bookshelf

In the summer of 2001, R. K. Narayan was wheeled into a hospital. Till then, this ninety-four-year-old man was busy planning a new novel, his sixteenth. Unfortunately, the writer, who was on life support, did not recover and this story with a grandfather as the protagonist – perhaps a sequel to his last novel

Grandmother’s Tale

(1992) – remained unwritten. To R.K. Narayan writing was as essential and as natural as breathing. Even when he travelled, he wrote about 1500 words per day and also maintained a diary; the jottings therein were used later in

My Dateless Diary

(1960). Narayan began publishing at the age of twenty-nine and wrote 15 novels, 8 short story collections, 3 mythologies, about 8 non-fictional writings, and a play entitled

House of Thunder

, which was never published

…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3474 words

Citation: Kar Barua, Sudeshna. "R. K. Narayan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3299, accessed 23 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article