The Bachelor of Arts

Narayan, R. K.

ISBN 10: 0226568334 / ISBN 13: 9780226568331

Published by The University of Chicago Press, 1980

About this Item

First University of Chicago Press Edition. Pages clean, unmarked, binding tight and square. Covers mostly clean, colors bright, spine and extremities with a little general wear. The author's second novel is the story of a young man coming of age in India. With an introduction by Graham Greene. Media Mail, Priority & most international shipping include free tracking information. Every book listed is located in my smoke free and climate controlled shop. All are inspected by me and will have qualities and/or flaws described. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 001888

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Bachelor of Arts
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226568334
• ISBN 13: 9780226568331
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good-
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

"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 a long arm's 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."--Graham Greene Offering rare insight into the complexities of Indian middle-class society, R. K. Narayan traces life in the fictional town of Malgudi. The Dark Room is a searching look at a difficult marriage and a woman who eventually rebels against the demands of being a good and obedient wife. In Mr. Sampath, a newspaper man tries to keep his paper afloat in the face of social and economic changes sweeping India. Narayan writes of youth and young adulthood in the semiautobiographical Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. Although the ordinary tensions of maturing are heightened by the particular circumstances of pre-partition India, Narayan provides a universal vision of childhood, early love and grief. "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

Review

"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)