"The ______ attained a certain degree of popularity, which, though pleasant in itself, brought in its wake involvements that turned out to be ludicrous and even tragic." It was made into a film which mutilated the original storyline much to the author's chagrin. A planned Broadway edition was as reckless in its treatment. The author had to withhold his permission to present it on stage, even as the adaptation was done by an old friend of his, a former literary editor of the New York Times. As an example of the outrage, The author mentions, "For instance, his version managed to abolish the heroine. I objected to his omission and to two irrelevant characters of his own; above all I objected to the hero's turning around and urinating on the stage."
Matters became rather acrimonious over this script and the author had to leave New York at a very short notice to avoid being summoned for a subpoena; he found asylum in his country's consulate before boarding a flight out of the United States. However the script was later revised and “The _______” opened in Broadway in March 1968. It closed in less than a week.
If you fill in the blank with the name of the book, you can easily identify the author. Another hint, he was rumoured to be in contention for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, but did not win. He explained what the deliberation of the Nobel Prize committee must've been like:
"...His writing is too simple, and too readable, requiring no effort on the part of the reader. ...He has created a new map called X in which his characters live and die. Story after story is set in the same place, which is not progressive, a rather stagnant background..... We hope some day {the author} will develop into a full-fledged writer deserving our serious consideration."
Ans. R. K. Narayan and Guide. Ravikiran got it right. The article can be found here.
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