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Wilson Harris (Born March 24, 1921) is a Guyanese writer. He first wrote poetry, but since has become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be quite abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter very wide-ranging.
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Background
Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in the then British Guiana. After studying at Queen's College in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, Harris became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannas and rain forests he gained during his time as a surveyor has formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction.
He came to England in 1959 and published his first novel Palace of the Peacock in 1960. This became the first of a quartet of novels, The Guyana Quartet, which also includes The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963). He later wrote the Carnival trilogy consisting of Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990).
His most recent novels are Jonestown (1996), which tells of the mass-suicide of a thousand followers of cult leader Jim Jones; The Dark Jester (2001), his latest semi-autobiographical novel, The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and one of his most accessible novels in decades, The Ghost of Memory (2006).
Wilson Harris also writes non-fiction and critical essays and has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liège (2001). He has twice been winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature.
Works
Novels
Palace of the Peacock, 1960
The Far Journey of Oudin, 1961
The Whole Armour, 1962
The Secret Ladder, 1963
Heartland, 1964
The Eye of the Scarecrow, 1965
The Waiting Room, 1967
Tumatumari, 1968
Ascent to Omai, 1970
The Sleepers of Roraima (illustrated by Kay Usborne), 1970
The Age of the Rainmakers (illustrated by Kay Usborne), 1971
Black Marsden: A Tabula Rasa Comedy, 1972
Companions of the Day and Night, 1975
Enigma of Values: An Introduction, 1975
Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness/Genesis of the Clowns, 1977
The Tree of the Sun, 1978
The Angel at the Gate, 1982
Carnival, 1985
The Guyana Quartet (Palace of the Peacock, The Far Journey of Oudin,The Whole Armour, The Secret Ladder), 1985
The Infinite Rehearsal, 1987
The Four Banks of the River of Space, 1990
Resurrection at Sorrow Hill, 1993
The Carnival Trilogy (Carnival, The Infinite Rehearsal, The Four Banks of the River of Space), 1993
Jonestown, 1996
The Dark Jester, 2001
The Mask of the Beggar, 2003
The Ghost of Memory, 2006
Short stories
The Sleepers of Roraima, 1970
The Age of the Rainmakers, 1971
Poetry
Fetish Miniature Poets Series, 1951
The Well and the Land, 1952
Eternity to Season, 1954
Nonfiction
Tradition and the West Indian Novel (lecture), 1965
Tradition, the Writer and Society: Critical Essays, 1967
History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas, 1970
Fossil and Psyche, 1974
Explorations: A Series of Talks and Articles 1966- 1981, 1981
The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination, 1983
The Radical Imagination (essays), 1992
Selected Essays, 1999
Prizes and awards
1987 Guyana Prize for Literature
1992 Premio Mondello dei Cinque Continenti
2002 Guyana Prize for Literature (Special Award)
External links
Further reading
- Adler, Joyce Sparer. Exploring the Palace of the Peacock: Essays on Wilson Harris. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003. ISBN 976-640-140-3
- Hena Maes-Jelinek. The Labyrinth of Universality. Wilson Harris's Visionary Art of Fiction. (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006), 564 pp.
- Barbara J. Webb. Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction: Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant. (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P., 1992).
- Wilson Harris Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 20 September 2008, at 11:05.
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