SOURCE: "Narrative Techniques in R. K. Narayan's Short Stories," in Indian Readings in Commonwealth Literature, edited by G. S. Amur et al., Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1985, pp. 106-16.

In this essay, Jeurkar explores the three narrator-types found in Narayan's fiction: the "Talkative Man," the third-person narrator, and the omniscient narrator.

Among the Indo-English fiction writers Narayan is the most prolific, having published twelve novels and seven volumes of short stories besides a travelogue, A Dateless Diary, and an autobiography, My Days. His fame, the critics contend, rests almost entirely on his achievement as a novelist. However, "it is one of the ironies of literary history that while so much is made of Narayan's novels, the short stories which have the unmistakable stamp of the artist in him should be relatively neglected." The estimates of Narayan would be one-sided since "Narayan's short stories are artistically as distinguished as his...