Wilson Harris

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.

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

hort 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

* [http://www.postcolonialweb.org/caribbean/harris/harrisov.html Wilson Harris: An Overview]
* [http://www.L3.ulg.ac.be/harris The Wilson Harris Bibliography]
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1972887,00.html Guardian article on Harris by Maya Jaggi]

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).
* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/harris.wilson.html Wilson Harris Collection] at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin