My Days is the only memoir from R.K. Narayan, one of the twentieth century's most important writers in the English language. This edition includes a foreword by John Updike.
In the wryly funny style that has made him famous, R.K. Narayan shares his life story, beginning in his grandmother's garden in Madras with a ferocious pet peacock. As a young boy with no interest in school he trains grasshoppers and scouts and then, against the advice of all, especially his commanding headmaster father, the dreaming Narayan begins to write fiction. When one of his pieces is accepted by Punch magazine, what he describes as his 'first prestige publication', his life becomes gradually filled with bumbling British diplomats, strange movie moguls, evasive Indian officials and 'the blind urge' to fall in love.
Like his fiction R.K. Narayan's memoirs are acutely perceptive of the human condition, often brilliantly funny and always forgiving. RK Narayan was born in Madras, South India and educated there and at Maharaja's College in Mysore. His first novel, "Swami and Friends" (1935) and its successor "The Bachelor of Arts" (1937) are both set in the fictional territory of Malgudi. He has gone on to write more than ten more novels as well as several volumes of short stories and in 1982 was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives in India.
