PENGUIN BOOKS LAUGH WITH LAXMAN
Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman was born and educated in Mysore. Soon after he graduated from the University of Mysore, he started drawing cartoons for the Free Press Journal, a newspaper in Bombay. Six months later he joined the Times of India, a newspaper he has been with, as staff cartoonist, for over fifty years. He has written and published numerous short stories, essays and travel articles. Some of these were published in a book, Idle Hours. He has also written two novels, The Hotel Riviera and The Messenger, both published by Penguin' Books. Penguin has also published several collections of Laxman's cartoons in the series The Best of Laxman. In June 1998, the Times of India published a collection entitled 50 Years of Independence Through the Eyes of R.K. Laxman. Laxman's autobiography, entitled The Tunnel of Time, was published by Penguin Books in the same month.
R.K. Laxman was awarded the prestigious Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. The University of Marathwada conferred an honorary Doctor of Literature degree on him. He has won many awards for his cartoons, including Asia's top journalism award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, in 1984.
R.K. Laxman lives in Mumbai.
R.K. Laxman
LAUGH WITH LAXMAN
PENGUIN BOOKS
The other side of R.K. Laxman
For decades now, R.K. Laxman's cartoons, nestled in corner of the-front page of the newspaper and ridiculing the import of the very news items they are surrounded by, have delighted millions of readers morning. These cartoons, featuring the trademark figure of the Common Man and collected in several volumes of the Best of Laxman series, have proved to be enduringly popular travesties of our public life.
There is, however, another half of Laxman's oeuvre comprising cartoons that appear on the back page of the Sunday newspaper Some of these cartoons reveal what politicians, executives and high-placed professionals might say and do in private often behind closed doors. Others look into the future or lend a speaking voice to animals to gain a different perspective on our everyday affairs. These are worlds that even the ubiquitous Common Man is not privy to. Yet it is here that Laxma's sense of parody and satire find some of their best expressions, commenting caustically on our social and political character by pointing out the ineongruities inherent in our systems.
Previously uncollected, some of these rare but masterly cartoons are brought together for the first time in this first volume of Laugh with Laxman as a special treat for all Laxman fans.
Cartoons