Malgudi Milieu

A literary work is often foregrounded both in thought and centent and it definitely reveals a worldview despite its social, political and ideological natural status. This book makes a systematical analysis that Indo-Anglian novel is a social document and R.K. Narayan’s fiction and non-fiction are not an exception to this norm. R.K. Narayan is a novelist of the middle classes although he never portrayed class in an historical perspective and also he is not an apologist of this class. His fiction and non-fiction present a lively picture of the middle class hopes, fears, inhibitions and predicaments as the middle class struggle for security, status, respectability and recognition moves through the zigzag path of materialism, modernism, individualism and liberalism. An attempt has been made to understand the comic ironic mode of the novelist and the suitability of this mode to his content. It is an excellent device and a superb aesthetic achievement that the novelist blends gaiety and melancholy into a humorous situation without any trace of cynicism in it. He weaves his message in such a delightful pattern that the common reader relishes the wit and humour springing from his leisurely narrative style while the adult imagination explores the deeper layers of social and moral insights wondering at his technical virtuoso.