The English Teacher - Softcover

Narayan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226568350 ISBN 13: 9780226568355

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1980

Synopsis

English teacher Krishna has recently married, but his wife and daughter live miles away. The story begins with his immediate family deciding to join him. Krishna is initially frightened by this, but he soon finds that his love for both his wife and child grows deeper than he could have imagined.

About this title

Review

"Narayan 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" (Graham Greene)

"Narayan’s humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imaginary township of Malgudi into a bubbling parish of the world" (Observer)

"In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov" (Sunday Telegraph)

"RK Narayan's Malgudi novels are humorous gems and it is a great pity that they are not better known. He wrote beautifully and with great compassion, something regrettably lacking in some humorous writing" (Alexander McCall Smith)

"An idyll as delicious as anything I have met in modern literature for a long time. The atmosphere and texture of happiness, and, above all, its elusiveness, have seldom been so perfectly transcribed." (Elizabeth Bowen)

From the Publisher

A classic
'Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of the colourful teeming that Narayan's fictional city of Malgudi conveys' John Updike

‘Narayan 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’ Graham Greene

Krishna, an English teacher in the town of Malgudi, nagged by the feeling he’s doing the wrong work, is nonetheless delighted by his domestic life, where his wife and young daughter wait for him outside the house every afternoon. Devastated by the death of his wife, Krishna comes to realise what he really wants to do, and makes a decision that will cahnge his life forever.

‘Narayan’s humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imaginary township of Malgudi into a bubbling parish of the world’ Observer

‘In his humour and compassion, Narayan comes close to being a twentieth-century Indian Chekhov’ Sunday Telegraph

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226568350
• ISBN 13: 9780226568355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184