Showing posts with label Malgudi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malgudi. Show all posts

Sunday 25 April 2021

Finding Malgudi in the Mediterranean, with Victoria Hislop

Since I can’t physically holiday on the Mediterranean this summer, I’m doing the next best thing and reading about Mediterranean holiday locations.

I reread The Last Dance, by Victoria Hislop, a collection of short stories I’d picked up while travelling in Greece many years ago. I’m loving it. Because these vignettes of Greek village life could so easily have been set in RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

These are stories of a simple, happy people, living among friends and family members they have known for generations. They sometimes get into fracas with each other, but these frictions are quickly and happily resolved.

There is a story of the Malkis brothers who fight over an inherited street cafĂ©, split it down the middle, but then make up and reunite. There is the story of Claire from Yorkshire, who is engaged to Andreas the Cypriot, who learns about her fiancĂ©’s family and to feel at home in this place where it is really hot even at Christmas. The title story is about Theodoris, who shares a dance with his one true love on the night they both are getting married to others. Fortunately, this collection doesn’t feature any deeper tragedy or pathos.

Sometimes reality does intrude on this idyllic world. The anti-Euro Athens riots make an appearance in one story, sort of like the Indian independence movement makes an appearance in Swami and Friends. But for most part, this collection evokes a simple world that carries on despite these intrusions, like Tolkien’s Shire, or Asterix the Gaul’s indomitable village, or RK Narayan’s Malgudi.

“I am often asked, ‘Where is Malgudi?’” wrote RK Narayan in his introduction to Malgudi Days. “All I can say is it is imaginary and not to be found on any map…”. So, Malgudi can’t be found on a map of the Aegean. But it does have kindred spirits on those rocky islands.

From Malgudi Days

RK Narayan with his wife Rajam


Victoria Hislop with her husband Ian