SOURCE: "Western Ideology and Eastern Forms of Fiction: The Case of Mulk Raj Anand," in Asian and Western Writers in Dialogue: New Cultural Identities, edited by Guy Amirthanayagam, The Macmillan Press, 1982, pp. 142-58.

In the following essay, Harrex focuses on theme and structure in Anand's fiction, noting a close relationship between form and moral-social ideology.

Any discussion of the formal and technical aspects of Mulk Raj Anand's fiction necessitates consideration of Anand's intentions, attitudes and themes. Anand explores aspects of the human condition, mainly Indian, from the point of view of certain assumptions; his stories, characters and themes evolve out of the interactions of these assumptions with mirror images of 'real life'; his dramatisations of these interactions constitute a quest for a coherent world view. I would further postulate a close correlation between this quest for ideological structure and his quest for the fictional form most compatible with...