In the following essay, Crane discusses "A Horse and Two Goats" in relation to common themes in Narayan's fiction.

"A Horse and Two Goats," by R. K. Narayan appeared, in a somewhat different form, in The New Yorker in 1965. It was first published in its present form in the collection A Horse and Two Goats A Horse and Two Goats (1970), and was later included in Under the Banyan Tree, a selection of Narayan's stories to 1984.

Narayan is admired as a writer whose novels and stories are remarkably consistent in quality. Yet one or two works do stand out—like the novel The Guide (1958) and the short story "A Horse and Two Goats." To many, Narayan is best known as the creator of Malgudi, one of literature's most enduring and endearing fictional worlds, so it is somewhat ironic that "A Horse and Two Goats" is one of...