The Man-Eater of Malgudi

This is the first full length Malgudi novel I have read - there have been a few novellas and of course Malgudi Days, but this one is a little different.

Narayan is able to spend some more time, rounding things out - or maybe dragging things out. The whole time I was reading this I felt like I needed to rush to reach a disclosure, or to get to an important aspect. It is only a relatively short book, and yet I felt compelled to hurry. Perhaps Narayan had too much time to tell his story?
While I enjoyed it (and gave it four stars) I perhaps didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. I have set it aside in my shelf for a little over a year, watching and waiting, and finally read it, so perhaps I built up my expectations in this manner.

I won't spoil an interesting plot, other than to say, it was certainly not on topic as I had preconceived it. My preconceived expectation of ‘the man-eater' was a story around a tiger, or some other ferocious beast, terrorising Malgudi - but no, it was not this. Instead it is the story of a taxidermist who comes to live in the town, and his effect on Narataj, the printer.

I was interested to see that Narayan dedicated this book to Graham Greene - “to mark (more than) a quarter of a century of friendship”, the man who wisely counselled Narayan to shorten his name to become more manageable for his English audience (from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, to RK Narayan).

4 stars.