SOURCE: A review of Under the Banyan Tree, in the New York Times Book Review, July 21, 1985, pp. 1,19.

Kazin's review of Under the Banyan Tree focuses on the seemingly limitless wealth of material available to Narayan in course of everyday life.

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan is on the threshold of 80 still India's most notable novelist and short-story writer in English. Quite apart from the beautiful traditionalism of his middle name, there is good reason to note his full Indian name. Mr. Narayan is an elegant, deceptively simple stylist who cleverly reports—or translates—the speech of his Indian characters into inflated schoolroom English. "How can we blame the rains when people are so evilminded?" "A good action in a far-off place did not find an echo, but an evil one did possess that power." Yet everything he describes is intensely local, reflecting his long residence in Mysore and the intricacy...