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Title: charming
Review: I bought this in Madras and that same night Chandra brought up Narayan in conversation -- raised in Mysore, brother to RK Laxman. Malgudi is not Mysore, though, but smaller, provincial, in the orbit of Madras -- perhaps some place like Chenglepat, Seshadri's birthplace. This book has a loose, whimsical mood to it. The twin protagonists, the unworldly editor and the worldly yet also idealistic printer, are wonderful. But the story isn't very tight. Short as it is, it reads as if written in installments. Interesting that it was published in London several years before India. I think that this book influenced Naipaul's House for Mr. Biswas -- Naipaul recognized his own father in Narayan's thwarted editor.
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