Mr. Sampath--the Printer of Malgudi (Phoenix Fiction)
Books / Paperback
ISBN: 0226568393 / Publisher: University of Chicago Press, October 1994
Fresh from the presses of the Truth Printing Works, the weekly edition of The Banner enjoys a certain distinction. Srinivas, its editor and sole contributor, concerns himself with artistic and intellectual problems: Mr. Sampath, its printer, amicably shoulders the financial burdens. When the paper folds - a surprise to them both - Mr. Sampath sees a way to save an equable partnership. With splendid magnanimity he arranges for Srinivas to write film scripts for Sunrise Productions. Unfortunately, the glamor of it all goes to Mr. Sampath's head, and his sudden change of fortune leads to sublime, unmitigated chaos.
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"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 GreeneOffering 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"Narayan's limits are meticulously imposed and observed but his humor 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."—Christopher Wordsworth, Observer
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