It is odd at a time when we are beginning to pay attention to Commonwealth writers that a writer of the character and maturity of R. K. Narayan should hardly have been noticed at all. It is true that some of the more obvious motives directing us to these writers probably do not operate in respect of Narayan. His themes are not particularly contemporary, fashionable or provocative…. Nor does his language work with the peasant vigour which we are apt to find so attractive in the West Indians, our current novelists having elected, either from inclination or simply helplessness, to restrict themselves to very few of the language's possibilities. Narayan uses a pure and R(asipuram) K(rishnaswami) Narayan 1906– © Jovce Ravid 1983limpid English, easy and natural in its run and tone, but always an evolved and conscious medium, without the exciting, physical energy—sometimes adventitiously injected—that marks...