R.K. Narayan (Illustrated by Lavanya Naidu)

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras 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. In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including 'A Horse and Two Goats', 'Malgudi Days', and 'Under the Banyan Tree', two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the retold 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.