The Grandmother's Tale

Three novellas - one of a grandmother, one of an old miser, and one of a childless couple - Narayan returns the reader to a world of small-town India, with its wry humour, its small betrayals, and its moments of great poignancy. 'In the title story of this collection of marvellous stories, the narrator, a novelist, sits at the elbow of his grandmother as she tells of how her mother, betrothed at seven years old, had to pursue her runaway "husband" halfway across the subcontinent.In "Guru", a corrupt, grasping official gets his comeuppance, not so much because he is crooked but because he fails to honour a financial pledge made to his daughters-in-law.In "Salt and Sawdust", when a young woman embarks on a career as a novelist the characters are again made to tread the commercial fault lines between cordiality and aloofness ... From such nerve endings are the making of humour, sadness, wisdom and joy' Observer'Narayan, the creator of the imaginary small town of Malgudi, is undoubtedly the most brilliant exponent of the fiction, as well as the friction, of intimacy ... Anthony Burgess has compared him to Chekhov.One might also compare him with those other masters of small worlds, John McGahern and Isaac Singer.That there is argument over his literary allegiances is proof of the universality of his intelligent charm' Sunday Times'A storyteller of a high order ... It is as wise as it is funny' Daily Telegraph'Irresistibly readable' The Herald