"The Guide" is a 1958 novel by R.K. Narayan, detailing the life of a "guide" in a small Indian town. Like most of his works, most of the book takes place in around the fictional town of Malgudi. The book is told over the life of the protagonist, and is told in sections that alternate between flashbacks and the present.
The protagonist of the story is a man nicknamed Railway Raju, whose father is a shopkeeper in Malgudi. When he inherits his father's shop at a train station, he quickly becomes bored with tending shop and becomes a tour guide, helping tourists see local sights, many of which he fabricates the importance of. His status as a tour guide allows him to engage in low-grade corruption and hobnobbing, and his sense of self-importance grows while his business deteriorates. While working as a self-appointed guide, he meets a man named Marco and his wife, Rosie, a dancer. He seduces Rosie, which causes a scandal, but again rises to prominence as her manager when she becomes a famous dancer, which again allows him to engage in a life of seemingly harmless corruption. He is finally caught, goes to jail, and is released, where he drifts into being the holy man for a village, impressing the people with pious platitudes. When a drought strikes the village, Raju must decide whether he will act out the role of holy man or flee.
Although this synopsis goes into some details, it does outline the basic conflict of the book, shown in its title, which is somewhat ironic. Raju is at first a guide in a quite banal sense, fooling tourists by making up stories and profiting off of Rosie's career, but by the end of the book, may have become a genuine spiritual guide.
Like most of Narayan's work, this book has a lightly comic tone, even when it is dealing with serious subject matter. Most of the character development goes on implicitly, since the book deals with external actions more than internal thoughts. This leaves the reader to guess at whether Raju's life has really changed his character, or whether his status as a holy man is just another scam.
Along with the central story, the book also contains much incidental information about society and politics in post-colonial India, although it isn't clear whether Narayan is using this to make a statement, or whether it is just incidental.
All in all, this is one of the better short novels I could recommend to someone interested in 20th century Indian literature, both for the story itself, and for the historical context it provides.