Would you like to read an adventure story from India? Swami and Friends is written by R.K. Narayan. It was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1935. The main character in the story is Swami who is ten years old and whose life consists mainly of having adventures with his friends. His greatest passion is the Malgudi Cricket Club which he founds together with his friends.
But the innocent Swami gets into trouble when he is carried away by the unrest in India in 1930. He gets expelled from two schools in succession and when things have gone quite out of hand he is forced to run away from home. I like this novel because it is more than a narrative of Swami’s adventures and because of the use of sympathetically observed details.
Peshani Vitharama,
Grade 8,
Sumana Balika Vidyalaya,
Ratnapura.