A STORY-TELLER’S WORLD by R. K....

A STORY-TELLER’S WORLD by R. K. Narayan (Penguin: $8.95) . Many of the brief essays and stories in this collection by one of India’s foremost writers have previously been unavailable in the United States. R. K. Narayan muses on a variety of topics: the care that goes into making Indian coffee; the changes the English language has undergone in India; the problems of writing “Indian” fiction; reactions to the conquest of Everest by a team of British mountaineers. These pungent sketches offer American readers a rare view of the culture of southern India, the “Malgundi” of Narayan’s fiction.