The Dark Room

by R. K. Narayan

Overview

R. K. Narayan (1906—2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. In The Dark Room, Narayan’s portrait of aggrieved domesticity, the docile and obedient Savitri, like many Malgudi women, is torn between submitting to her husband’s humiliations and trying to escape them. Written during British rule, this novel brings colonial India into intimate focus through the narrative gifts of this master of literary realism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345803818
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/25/2012
Series:	Vintage International
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
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

B Wright

"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 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."

Editorial Reviews

"Narayan's limits are meticulously imposed and observed by his humour and compassion come from a deep universal well, with the result that he has transformed his imaginary of Malgudi into a bubbling parish of the world." -- The Observer

Christopher Wordsworth

"The experience of reading one of his novels is...comparable to one's first reaction to the great Russian novels: The first 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." -- The New York Herald Tribune Book Review

Margaret Parto