The World of Nagaraj

Abstract

In his last novel The World of Nagaraj (1990), R.K.Narayan re-presents the quintessential South Indian village of Malgudi, which he had created and re-created over and over again in one novel after another since its genesis in 1935 in Swami and Friends. In The World of Nagaraj the infiltration of postmodern self-reflexive metafictional elements that commingle with the portrayal of Malgudi life produces a new kind of Malgudi novel. In the novel Narayan focuses on the art of storytelling and the world of a storyteller through the protagonist Nagaraj's sole obsession with writing a magnum opus on the celestial storyteller Narada. This paper traces a very different phase in Narayan's career, which starts with Talkative Man (1986) and sadly ends with this last novel.