Wilson Harris

In his tale of a doomed crew beating their way up-river through the jungles of Guyana, first published in 1960, Wilson Harris revealed the unique poetic vision and laid out the themes and designs, not only of his famous work, The Guyana Quartet, but of all his future work. The Palace of the Peacock displays that vision in all its hallucinatory vividness, given additional impact by its rejection of the conventions of the twentieth-century novel and the uncompromising energy of its use of language in its response to character and landscape. The compelling adventure story of the narrative is paralleled by the artistic adventure of its composition.

Palace of the Peacock

Everyman Masters, sixty-five, begins a spiritual journey through the mysterious Caribbean carnival of masks.

The Guyana Quartet

In this 1967 novel Wilson Harris explores the spiritual and psychic realities beyond the mundane facts of relationships, boldly constructing his story on the basis of fragments. When the Forrestals died in an explosion that wrecked their home and destroyed most of its contents, there survived a disjointed diary - or 'log book', as Susan Forrestal called it. She had suffered from an affliction of the eyes which, after three operations, left her almost blind. Abandoned by her lover, who disappeared without a trace, she eventually married a kind and solicitous husband; nevertheless her lover continued to haunt her in such a way that his presence had an almost living reality. 'I admire Wilson Harris's novels greatly; he is one of the very few living novelists whose works are too brief for my tastes.' Anthony Burgess

The Waiting Room

Wilson Harris's tenth novel, first published in 1972, is set in Edinburgh but, like much of his subsequent work, bridges continents by its imaginative reach. ''Doctor Black Marsden', tramp, shaman, and conjurer, is an ambivalent Merlin-figure representing both the hero's personal (and archetypal) shadow, and the creative, magus-like activity of the author himself.' Michael Gilkes, Journal of Commonwealth Literature '... my many visits to Scotland, and books I have read, have given me the sensation of a tone or inner vibrancy that may be due to the languages (English, Scottish, Gaelic) that are present in the subconscious imagination of sensitive Scots... [These] make for the cross-culturality (not mono-cultural) that came into play in Black Marsden.' Wilson Harris, 2008

Black Marsden

Borders

The Bookstore in America

'I was obsessed - let me confess - by cities and settlements in the Central and South Americas that are an enigma to many scholars. I dreamt of their abandonment, their bird-masks, their animal-masks ... Did their inhabitants rebel against the priests, did obscure holocausts occur, civil strife, famine, plague? Was Jonestown the latest manifestation...?' Jonestown (1996), one of Wilson Harris's most acclaimed creations, is a fictional re-imagining of the real-life ritual mass suicide orchestrated by Reverend Jim Jones in the remote Guyana forest in 1978. The novel's narrator, Francisco Bone, has survived the suicide albeit in a traumatized condition. By way of a dream-book he tries to heal his psychic wound, under the influence of the Mayan concept of time that twins past and future. Faber Finds is devoted to restoring to readers a wealth of lost or neglected classics and authors of distinction. The range embraces fiction, non-fiction, the arts and children's books. For a full list of available titles visit www.faberfinds.co.uk. To join the dialogue with fellow book-lovers please see our blog, www.faberfindsblog.co.uk.

Jonestown

Tells the story of Robin Redbreast Glass, a ghost reluctant to leave the world.

The Infinite Rehearsal

Alan Riach

Lectures and Talks

The Radical Imagination

The Four Banks of the River of Space

'What [Wilson] Harris is doing is to extend the boundaries of our very conception of fiction.' Robert Nye. First published in 1982, The Angel at the Gate is offered to readers as Wilson Harris's analysis and interpretation of the 'automatic writing' of 'Mary Stella Holiday': an assumed name for the secretary and patient of the late Father Joseph Marsden. 'Mary suffered from a physical and nervous malaise as The Angel at the Gate makes clear. Through Marsden - the medical care he arranged for her and the sessions he provided in Angel Inn which gave scope to her 'automatic talents' - that illness became a catalyst of compassion through which she penetrated layers of social and psychical deprivation to create a remarkable fictional life for 'Stella' (apart from 'Mary') in order to unravel the thread that runs through a diversity of association in past and present 'fictional lives.'' (From Harris's introductory 'Note.')

The Angel at the Gate

Michael Mitchell

Reflecting on three distinct periods in the unnamed narrator’s life in Guyana from the 1920s to the 1940s, this novel illustrates the various incidents that gradually change his perception of the world. After he experiences a disconcerting vision regarding one of his friends, he is rendered incapable of reviewing his own history until many years later, when this fictional account begins a voyage through his consciousness. This cyclical tale removes the props of linear narrative and conventional characterization, offering a compensating Proustian richness of sensuous associations. This powerful exploration of memory also delves into a political dimension, questioning the connection between the 1948 anti-colonial movement’s challenge of British power over Guyanese lives and the 1964 civil war between Africans and Indians in the South American state.

The Eye of the Scarecrow

This epic masterpiece is a radical landmark in modern literature, reissued with a foreword by poet Ishion Hutchinson to mark Wilson Harris' centenary. 'An exhilarating experience ... Genius.' Jamaica Kincaid I dreamt I awoke with one dead seeing eye and one living closed eye ... Guyana. An ancient landscape of rainforests and swamplands, haunted by the legacy of slavery and colonial conquest. It is the site of dangerous journeys through the Amazonian interior, where riverboat crews embark on spiritual quests and government surveys are sabotaged by indigenous uprisings. It is a universe of complex moralities, where the conspiracies of a sinister money-lender and the faked death of a murderer question innocence and inheritance. It is a place where life and death, myth and history, philosophy and metaphysics blur. And it is the birthplace of an epic masterpiece. Wilson Harris' The Guyana Quartet consists of four incandescent novels: Palace of the Peacock, The Far Journey of Oudin, The Whole Armour and The Secret Ladder. It is a landmark of twentieth-century literature, as revolutionary today as it was over half a century ago. 'The Guyanese William Blake . [Such] poetic intensity.' Angela Carter 'One of the great originals ... Visionary ... Dazzlingly illuminating.' Guardian 'Amazing ... Masterly ... Near-miraculous.' Observer 'Perhaps the most inimitable [writer] produced in the English-speaking Caribbean.' Fred D'Aguiar 'An extraordinary writer ... Courageous and visionary ... It speaks to us in tongues.' Pauline Melville 'Staggering ... Both brilliant and terrifying.' The Times

'Genius' (Jamaica Kincaid)

Wilson Harris' novel is based on the disguise Odysseus adopts on returning to his kingdom in Ithaca, and takes in philosophical traditions from around the world. Characters as diverse as Van Gogh, Dorian Gray, Cortez and Goethe make appearances in this meditation on the timelessness of art.

The Mask of the Beggar

With themes of ecological mismanagement in the wild areas of Guyana, this visionary novel follows Zechariah Stevenson, the son of a wealthy Georgetown businessman, while he works as the watchman at a timber factory deep within the interior. Isolated in the forest and having endured a fraud scandal, the mysterious death of his father, and the disappearance of his mistress, Zechariah begins a journey of self-discovery as he deconstructs previously held certainties about life by losing himself in nature. An immensely sensuous evocation of Guyanese flora and fauna, this novel is a profound plea for an ecological vision of mankind's relationship to nature.

Heartland

'He ascended, eyes riveted, nailed to the steps leading up to the top of the pyramid of the sun. How many human hearts he wondered had been plucked from bodies there to feed the dying light of the sun and create an obsession with royal sculptures, echoing stone?... It was time to take stock of others as hollow bodies and shelters into which one fell...' In Companions of the Day and Night (first published in 1975) Wilson Harris revives figures from his earlier Black Marsden - chiefly Clive Goodrich, the 'editor' of this text, who constructs a narrative from the papers of a figure known as Idiot Nameless: a wanderer between present and past, taking an Easter sojourn in Mexico that lasts both for days and for centuries. The results have the strangely hypnotic power characteristic of Wilson Harris's fiction.

Companions of the Day and Night

Various

Jamaica Kincaid

Eric Walrond

Sam Selvon

Jean Rhys

Kamau Brathwaite

Austin Clarke

Lorna Goodison

Paule Marshall

James Berry

Wayne Brown

Lawrence Scott

Andrew Salkey

Erna Brodber

Earl Lovelace

Makeda Silvera

Neil Bissoondath

Olive Senior

Roger Mais

Hazel D. Campbell

Willi Chen

Pauline Melville

Louise Bennett

Wilfred Wood

Kenneth Vidia Parmasad

Seepersad Naipaul

Claude MacKay

Frank Collymore

C... L. R. James

Garth St Omer

Vidiadhar Surajprashad Naipaul

N... D. Williams

Clyde Hosein

Alecia MacKenzie

Spanning the history of Caribbean writing, this meticulously compiled collection of 40 short stories includes pre-Columbian legends and myths from India and Africa, and many stories that are an evocative reminder of the turbulent history of the region. Authors featured include Andrew Salkey, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, and Lawrence Scott, among others. A major anthology reflecting the diversity and richness of Caribbean writing.

The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories

The Cross-cultural Imagination

The Womb of Space

The visionary masterpiece, tracing a riverboat crew's dreamlike jungle voyage ... 'An exhilarating experience ... Makes visions real and reality visions ... Genius.' Jamaica Kincaid 'A masterpiece: I love this book for its language, adventure and wisdomse.' Monique Roffey 'Revel in the inviolate, ever-deepening mystery of Wilson Harris's work.' Jeet Thayil 'The Guyanese William Blake . Such poetic intensity.' Angela Carter I dreamt I awoke with one dead seeing eye and one living closed eye ... A crew of men are embarking on a voyage up a turbulent river through the rainforests of Guyana. Their domineering leader, Donne, is the spirit of a conquistador, obsessed with hunting for a mysterious woman and exploiting indigenous people as plantation labour. But their expedition is plagued by tragedies, haunted by drowned ghosts: spectres of the crew themselves, inhabiting a blurred shadowland between life and death. As their journey into the interior - their own hearts of darkness - deepens, it assumes a spiritual dimension, guiding them towards a new destination: the Palace of the Peacock ... A modernist fever dream; prose poem; modern myth; elegy to victims of colonial conquest: Wilson Harris' masterpiece has defied definition for over sixty years, and is reissued for a new generation of readers. 'One of the great originals ... Visionary ... Dazzlingly illuminating.' Guardian 'Amazing ... Masterly ... Near-miraculous.' Observer 'Staggering ... Both brilliant and terrifying.' The Times 'The most inimitable [writer] produced in the English-speaking Caribbean.' Fred D'Aguiar 'Extraordinary ... Courageous and visionary ... It speaks to us in tongues.' Pauline Melville

'A masterpiece' - Monique Roffey

Palace of the Peacock (Faber Editions)

This volume, introduced by the author, brings together three novels first published separately. 'The trilogy comprises Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987) and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990), novels linked by metaphors borrowed from theatre, traditional carnival itself and literary mythology. The characters make Odyssean voyages through time and space, witnessing and re-enacting the calamitous history of mankind, sometimes assuming sacrificial roles in an attempt to save modern civilisation from self-destruction.' Independent on Sunday 'The Four Banks of the River of Space is a kind of quantum Odyssey... in which the association of ideas is not logical but... a 'magical imponderable dreaming'. The dreamer is Anselm, another of Harris's alter egos, like Everyman Masters in Carnival and Robin Redbreast Glass in The Infinite Rehearsal... Together, they represent one of the most remarkable fictional achievements in the modern canon.' Listener

The Carnival Trilogy

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Carnival of Psyche

Wilson Harris

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