 According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri , Narayan 's short stories have the same captivating feeling as his novels , with most of them less than ten pages long , and taking about as many minutes to read . She adds that between the title sentence and the end , Narayan provides the reader something novelists struggle to achieve in hundreds more pages : a complete insight to the lives of his characters . These characteristics and abilities led Lahiri to classify him as belonging to the pantheon of short @-@ story geniuses that include O. Henry , Frank O 'Connor and Flannery O 'Connor . Lahiri also compares him to Guy de Maupassant for their ability to compress the narrative without losing the story , and the common themes of middle @-@ class life written with an unyielding and unpitying vision . 
