In Commonwealth literary studies we know that certain early works in a national literature create a figure and a pattern of events which are then repeated in variations in later works in that national literature so that they become a stock property and a significant indicator of a principal constituent in that literature….

These recurrent figures and patterns are recognised by the very fact of their recurrence and can be named after their first clear manifestation….

The archetypal power of these figures and patterns resides in the realisation by the national writer that something is so true of his culture that he can capture it in one representative figure or pattern. (p. 339)

The figure of a tribal man becoming individualised is very common in Commonwealth fiction because it often recapitulates the writer's own story and therefore is the handiest material for a first novel, and because the novel...