In this chapter there is a brief consideration of Narayan's longer fiction. Broadly speaking, Narayan's themes are the recurring ones of childhood and its corollary, youth and falling in love, marriage and its contentment as well as discontents, filial relations, the urge to withdraw from society (this may be called the Sanyasi theme) and the inevitable return to society. The chapter also focuses on caste, class and gender questions and of course, there is the generally muted Gandhian theme and its obvious connection to the larger questions of Dharma, righteousness and Brahminical values. In all this we see Narayan broadly adhering to realism, though it does not prevent him from suggesting transcendence, or employing the fantastic or emblematic. His fiction finally performs a citizenly function because Naryan is deeply social and involved with the business of living.

Narayan was composing Swami and Friends even while he was trying to get some of his early short stories into print. His own early writings were usually essays for the Justice, The Hindu and G. A. Natesan's Indian Review. He wrote an essay on “How to write an Indian Novel” which was published by no less a forum than Punch (Ram 1996: 118). While he was writing to make ends meet (he had married Rajam in 1930), he was able to interest Graham Greene and with his help his first novel, Swami and Friends, got published on October 24, 1935.