LIBERATION MOTIF IN SELECT NOVELS OF MULK RAJ ANAND ...

disappointment because the central representative character isinadequately drawn. He doesn't possess the tragic substance orthe stuff of which a tragic character is made. Abiola 1rel.echaracterises his style as sober, disciplined and economic, andhis prose as utilitarian. He is not only a keen observer andrecorder but a committed African novelist who is involved in theprocess of "African Becoming1l.In Twelve African writers (1980) by Gerald Moore, there isan article on ~hinua Achebe. He perceptively points out thecircularity quite evident in the principal characters ofAchebe1s novels. The fate that is met by Obi in NLE is in no waydifferent from that encountered by his grandfather Okonkwo inTFA. By striving to do better than their progenitors or fellows,they do worse and end up most pathetically. According toMoore, there is a certain sirnialrity, cyclical fate that houndsthe Okonkwos. The author, further, refers to AchebeJs styleand range of language and his capacity to enrich and embellishhis language with a judicious intermingling of Igbo proverbs,myths and anecdotes. He discovers subtle manifestations of racialsuperiority on the part of the British officials created byAchebe. For him A Man of the Peo~le is a disappointment ascompared with the tragic grandeur of Arrow of God.Nkosi Lewis has published a book entitled Tasks and Masks:Themes and Stvles of African Literature (1981), wherein he has