A delightful collection from India's foremost storyteller, Under the Banyan Tree
adds twenty-eight tales of the rich and colorful heritage of R K Narayan's
fictional south Indian city, Malgudi. Narayan's characters, observed with a wry
and compassionate eye, come from every area of Indian society - merchants,
beggars, herdsmen, hermits, teachers, rogues - and represent in miniature a
wealth of human experience. A rebellious young man refuses to honour a vow made
by his parents in an ancestral temple long ago in Nitya. A shopkeeper is made
bankrupt by a charming stranger in A Career. In other tales, a schoolteacher
indulges for one traumatic day in the