My Days. A Memoir

My Days is the only memoir from R. K. Narayan, one of the twentieth century's most important writers in the English language. In the wry and truthful style that has made him famous, R. K. Narayan shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother's garden in Madras with a ferocious pet peacock. As a young boy with no interest in school he trains grasshoppers and scouts and then, against the advice of all, especially his commanding headmaster father, the dreaming Narayan begins to write fiction. When one of his pieces is accepted by Punch magazine, what be describes as his 'first prestige publication', his life gradually becomes filled with bumbling British diplomats, strange movie moguls, evasive Indian officials and 'the blind urge' to fall in love. Like his fiction, R. K. Narayan's memoir is acutely perceptive of the human condition, often brilliantly funny and always forgiving.