[In The Novel in the Third World, a] collection of essays on ten representative novels from Africa, India, the Caribbean, Papua New Guinea, and the Black and Native American communities in the United States, Larson proposes an evolutionary schema according to which third-world fiction can be defined in terms of its common characteristics, and not in terms of its relationship to Western literary models. Based primarily on narrative content, this schema distinguishes various stages in a process which has presumably repeated itself each time an European-American culture has sought to dominate non-Western peoples whose value systems are rooted in communal consciousness, a holistic view of history as cyclical recurrence, an inflexible attachment to traditional forms of behavior, and a propensity toward oral modes of story-telling.
The first stage in this process reflects an apparent death of the indigenous culture, a phenomenon that Larson considers pervasive in Maran's Batouala …, Ouologuem's Bound to Violence …, and Eri's The Crocodile…. The second stage—illustrated solely by Storm's Seven Arrows …—develops out of the conviction that the suppressed culture deserves to survive, even if it must be redefined within a context that remains implacably hostile to it. Accompanied by the growth of individualistic self-consciousness, a third stage emerges when the victims of colonialist oppression recognize the need to confront and assimilate their own past in order to exorcise its power over them. The attempt to accomplish this goal may ultimately result in evasion, as in Toomer's Cane …, or it may culminate in a heightened awareness of potential solidarity with others who have been similarly deprived of their roots, as in Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin…. Larson's final stage occurs during or after a successful revolt against the colonizing power, and it offers the promise of a dynamic new synthesis between the traditional values of indigenous culture and the intense awareness of self that characterizes Western thought. Rao's Kanthapura … forms a transitional link between the third and fourth stages, whereas Narayan's Grateful to Life and Death …, Markandaya's Two Virgins …, and Head's Question of Power … are used as examples of the fourth stage. (p. 70)
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