R.K. NARAYANS NOVELS: A STUDY

The Indian novelists in English have their roots in two traditions: the Indian and the Western. It was a challenge for them to express distinctly an Indian sensibility in an acquired language. Though the novels were being written in the regional languages, for instance, in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam, they had no English tradition. Naturally, at the formative stage, the Indian writers were greatly influenced by the European masterpieces of Tolstoy, Balzac and Dostoevsky in English translations. There was a great impact of the novels of the romantics and the early Victorians. Yet they were not the blind imitators of the Western models. On the other hand, they tried to establish their own tradition of novel writing in accordance with the ageold Indian tradition of storytelling.