R. K. Narayan is considered one of the finest of contemporary Indian writers. He is the author of The Guide and The Vendor of Sweets, novels about a mythical town called Malgudi in South India, and of a number of short stories. A Horse and Two Goats is made up of sketches or vignettes rather than stories; the dominant tone of the writing is casual, unthreatening, unsurprising….

The most interesting of the stories, "A Breath of Lucifer," which is apparently based upon a personal experience of the author's, deals with a temporarily blinded man and his dependence upon an eccentric hospital attendant. But their relationship does not reveal anything to either of them, or to the reader. One wants very much to get into the reality, the texture of Indian life, to see the contemporary Indian world through an intelligent man's eyes, but Narayan consistently frustrates us: he...