| Greene greatly admired R K Narayan and helped publish his works in
Britain. The remarkable fact about their relationship was that Greene
and Narayan met only once, briefly, in London in 1964. The friendship
began in 1934 when Greene happened to come across a manuscript of Swami
and Friends. Greene was impressed and passed it on to Hamish Hamilton.
He also began a correspondence with R K Narayan. The correspondence lasted
until his death, with Greene taking around fifteen years to switch from
Dear Mr. Narayan and Graham Greene, to Dear Narayan and Graham.
Greene ( rather uncharacteristically gentle ) suggested a few alterations in the Indian Novelist's English at the beginning of the correspondence, a practice that lasted for half a century. Greene offered Narayan solace when the latter's works did not do well initially, besides discouraging him from considering the turning of his novels into screenplays. While Narayan's novels are much gentler than most of Greene's, Malgudi, the fictional town in which most of the former's novels are set, seemed to Greene "more familiar than Battersea or the Euston Road". His letter to Narayan, when the Indian's wife passed away in 1937 was particularly solicitous. Greene wrote: "To send the sympathy of strangers at such a cruel time seems like a mockery. But I've been happily married now for a long time, and I can imagine how appalling everything must seem to you now. I don't suppose you'll write again for months, but eventually you will, not be- cause you are just a good writer (there are hundreds), but because you are one of the finest. We still hope we shall see you, here or in India. If there is no war." |
R K Narayan's Works
Fiction
1935 Swami and Friends
1937 The Bachelor of Arts
1938 The Dark Room
1945 The English Teacher
1949 Mr. Sampath - The Printer
of Malgudi
1952 The Financial Expert
1955 Waiting for the Mahatma
1958 The Guide
1961 The Man-Eater of Malgudi
1967 The Vendor of Sweets
1976 The Painter of Signs
1983 A Tiger for Malgudi
1986 Talkative Man
1990 The World of Nagaraj
1993 Grandmother's Tales
Non-Fiction
1960 Next Sunday
1964 My Dateless Diary
1974 My Days
1980 The Emerald Route
1988 A Writer's Nightmare
Short Stories
1947 An Astrologer's Day
and Other Short Stories
1956 Lawley Road
1970 A Horse and Two Goats
1974 Reluctant Guru
1982 Malgudi Days
1985 Under the Banyan Tree
1993 Salt and Sawdust
Mythology
1965 Gods, Demons and Others
1972 The Ramayana
1978 The Mahabarata
Other Resources on the Web
Narayan on the Penguin Website.
Anoop Sarkar's R K Narayan Page.
