Paper Details

Name: Nagendra Bahadur Khatri
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume-12, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 23-31
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17105611

ABSTRACT
The treatment of social and national issues from humanistic, realistic and authentic point of
view has been the major trait in R.K Narayan‟s works. His fiction published after
independence focus on the dilemmas of post-independence realities. Like most of the Indian
writers writing in English during early post-independence times, when India was learning to
cope with a new condition of independence, Narayan too wrote fiction that was in sync with
the new emerging condition. Like his contemporaries, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao, he too
chose to represent the socio-cultural ethos of his times but refrained from political statements
or involvement. Some of his works especially The Financial Expert, The Guide and The
Vendor of Sweets focus on the rise of material concerns in post-Independence fiction, and
these works have been taken in the present paper. The lingering impact of western ways of
life and thinking have also been explored in this paper. Fictional reworking of history and
mythology has also been rediscovered by him in this period. National boundary as well as
national identity too occupy his attention during this period. There is a discernible shift from
his pre-Independence novels in which familial and simple problems of the characters build
the narrative to material concerns in many of his post-independence novels. The fiction
undertaken in this paper are-The Financial Expert (1952), The Guide (1958), The Vendor of
Sweets (1967).
Keywords: Materialism, Post-Independence Writing, Western Influence