This collection brings between two covers some of the most memorable fiction that has emerged from R.K. Narayan's pen. It contains �The Man-eater of Malgudi', arguably the greatest novel Narayan has ever written, which tells the story of Nataraj, owner of a small printing press, and his house guest Vasu, a taxidermist, who moves into Nataraj's attic with a menagerie of dead animals. There is also �Talkative Man', a novella that starts off with the arrival on the Delhi train of a stranger in a blue suit who takes up residence in the station waiting-room and refuses to budge. Also included here are some of the most popular and striking short stories Narayan has written: from the celebrated �A Horse and Two Goats' and �Salt and Sawdust', the tale of a wife who cannot distinguish between salt and sawdust for seasoning and thus leaves her husband with no option but to cook himself, to gems like �An Astrologer's Day', �The Shelter' and �Under the Banyan Tree', which is about a man called Nambi who has the uncanny ability to mesmerize his audience with his stories, but eventually lapses into silence.

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and educated there and at Maharaja�s College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan�s work The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country�s highest literary honor. In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Narayan died in 2001.