East-West Encounter in R.K.Narayan’s The Man Eater of Malgudi : A Post- Colonial Exploration

Abstract

R.K. Narayan is a great novelist and storyteller of India. He believed in the concept of “Art for the sake of Art”. In other words, his main purpose as a writer is to entertain the readers with his extra-ordinary art of presenting the situations and settings in a beautiful manner. His classic work The Man Eater of Malgudi is rich in both theme and technique. It presents a very beautiful portrayal of the man and manner, feelings and thoughts of both the East and the West or both the colonial and post-colonial attitudes. The novel also presents the contrast between tradition and modernity. It beautifully presents slow decay of culture in Malgudi, an imaginary land scape which is often termed as ‘the country of the mind’. R.K.Narayan is a pure artist. He is neither a moralist nor a philosopher. Like all other great artists, his main objective is to create a solution at the end of the novel. This is what we find in this novel in which normalcy is restored after several ups and downs in its path.