india author m 1- a-nan - University of Wollongong

GUPTA, G.S. BALARAMA. Mulk Raj Anand: A Study of his Fiction in Humanist
Perspective Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1973, xi + 163 pp.
GUPTA, G.S. BALARAMA. "Towards A Closer Understanding of Anand" in SHARMA,
K.K. ed. Indo-English Literature: a Collection of Critical Essays, Ghaziabad: Vimal
Prakashan, 1977: 113-20.
1) Claims “comprehensive historical humanism” has been the principle position behind
his literary efforts. 2) Investigates the responses to questions put in correspondence with the
author. 3) Reprinted from Sharma, K. K. ed. Indo-English Literature: A Collection of Critical
Essays (Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1977): 113-20.
GUPTA, G.S. BALARAMA. "Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable: The Dialectics of Self-
Affirmation" in NAIK, M.K. Perspectives on Indian Fiction in English New Delhi: Abhinav
Publications, 1985: 13-20.
HARREX, S.C. "Western Ideology and Eastern Forms of Fiction: The Case of Mulk Raj
Anand" in AMIRTHANAYAGAM, GUY. ed. Asian and Western Writers in Dialogue: New
Cultural Identities London: Macmillan, 1982: 142-58.
Argues a correlation between Anand’s quest for ideological structure and fictional form.
Labelling his novels “socio-political messianic”, Harrex finds Untouchable a successful
expression of commitment that avoids diatribe arising from a combination of factors including
Anand’s “self-projection” whereby objective social realism includes subjective felt experience
and the quest “to fuse Western realist tradition [with] the Indian tradition of the moral fable”.
Reads Apology for Heroism for details of the author’s search for an adequate form to
convey the life of common people. Anand rejects the ‘dead myth’ of Vedantic Absolutism and
turns to the Western novel, but increasingly attempts to assert an Indian modification of
realism in a reflection of his own ambivalence about East and West, tradition and modernity.
He moves to a more Romantic position in expounding his idea of “body-soul drama”. Defends
Anand against charges of communist propagandising. Charts Anand’s struggle to shape
novelistic amorphousness and autobiography into a moral fable of awakening consciousness in
Untouchable, seeing its success in The Big Heart. Private Life of an Indian Prince
changes the viewpoint to achieve more detachment. The ‘Lalu trilogy’ comprehensively
attempts an allegorical representation of “the meaning for India of the modern historical
process.”
IYENGAR, K.R. SRINIVASA. "The Bubble: A Novel by Mulk Raj Anand" Commonwealth
Quarterly 14.38 (1989): 57-62.
1) Claims impresive achievement for this fourth part of Anand’s seven-part
autobiographical novel. 2) Character’s self-discovery as novel records coming of age in
hothouse atmosphere of international artistic world. 3) Psychological analysis correlates the
bubble of the title to individual’s ego and its development and growth. 4) Doesn’t break any
new ground here.
KAKATIYA Journal of English Studies 2.1 (1977) special issue. Ed Satyanarain Singh. See
individual entries: Chatterjee, Fisher, Gupta,
Afterword: “Why I Write” by Anand, chronology, bibliography.