In 1989, Narayan published
Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching. It received the
Victor Turner Prize from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and was co-winner of the Elsie Clews Prize for Folklore from the
American Folklore Society. Reviewing the novel, Indian poet and editor
Dom Moraes praised the work, saying:"This is a novel well received and achieved: it is also intelligent, excellently written, and revelatory of what it is like to be an American born in India. It makes one feel Narayan is that very rare bird, a born writer, and that she may fly far." Narayan published
Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales in 1997. In 2002 a new edition of the first collection of Indian folk tales in English,
Mary Frere's
Old Deccan Days, was published with an introduction by Narayan. In 2007, she published a memoir
My Family and Other Saints. An autobiographical work in which "Gods, gurus and eccentric relatives compete for primacy",
The New York Times described the work as an "enchanting memoir". Its title is a reference to
Gerald Durrell's
My Family and Other Animals, a childhood inspiration to Narayan. In her 2012 work
Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov, Narayan used
Anton Chekhov's
Sakhalin Island as inspiration for an exploration of ethnographic writing.
James Wood, writing of his 'Books of the Year' in
The New Yorker, described it as a "brief and brilliant book" that he read "with huge pleasure". In 2016 Narayan published
Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills, about women's traditions of singing in the
Kangra Valley. In 2024, Narayan published
Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora. == References ==