In the following essay, Mackey discusses the novel The Eye of the Scarecrow as a pivotal work in the development of Harris's self-reflexive narrative style.

In the following essay, Mackey discusses the novel The Eye of the Scarecrow as a pivotal work in the development of Harris's self-reflexive narrative style.

In the following essay, Drake explores the themes of conquest and desire in Palace of the Peacock.

In the following essay, Drake explores the themes of conquest and desire in Palace of the Peacock.

In the following essay, Webb compares Palace of the Peacock with Alejo Carpentier's Los passos perdidos (The Lost Steps), observing that both novels depict a symbolic quest for cultural and personal identity within the context of Caribbean history.

In the following essay, Webb compares Palace of the Peacock with Alejo Carpentier's Los passos perdidos (The Lost Steps), observing that both novels depict a symbolic quest for cultural and personal identity within the context of Caribbean history.

In the following interview, Harris discusses the setting, characters, and themes of The Secret Ladder, the evolution of his artistic vision, and his concept of the novel genre.

In the following interview, Harris discusses the setting, characters, and themes of The Secret Ladder, the evolution of his artistic vision, and his concept of the novel genre.

In the following essay, Johnson focuses on Harris's concern with the body as a metaphorical locus of gendered identity and cross-cultural community in The Carnival Trilogy.

In the following essay, Johnson focuses on Harris's concern with the body as a metaphorical locus of gendered identity and cross-cultural community in The Carnival Trilogy.

In the following essay, Mackey explores the sense of geographical “place” in Harris's representations of the Caribbean.

In the following essay, Mackey explores the sense of geographical “place” in Harris's representations of the Caribbean.

In the following essay, Webb compares Black Marsden with Alejo Carpentier's Concierto barroco, arguing that both novels narrate a journey in which “the protagonists confront questions of personal identity and the relationship between art and reality.”

In the following essay, Webb compares Black Marsden with Alejo Carpentier's Concierto barroco, arguing that both novels narrate a journey in which “the protagonists confront questions of personal identity and the relationship between art and reality.”

In the following essay, López discusses the influence of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness on post-colonial fiction, particularly its representation of otherness, and argues that Harris surpasses Conrad in his writing.

In the following essay, López discusses the influence of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness on post-colonial fiction, particularly its representation of otherness, and argues that Harris surpasses Conrad in his writing.

In the following essay, Phillips demonstrates how Harris uses symbolism in Palace of the Peacock to express ideas of deep spiritual significance that can transform the human psyche.

In the following essay, Phillips demonstrates how Harris uses symbolism in Palace of the Peacock to express ideas of deep spiritual significance that can transform the human psyche.

In the following essay, Drake explores the feminist themes of family, society, and history in Tumatumari.

In the following essay, Drake explores the feminist themes of family, society, and history in Tumatumari.

In the following essay, Adams argues that Harris's early poetry acts as a key to understanding the images, themes, structures, and characters of his later novels.

In the following essay, Adams argues that Harris's early poetry acts as a key to understanding the images, themes, structures, and characters of his later novels.

In the following essay, Russell examines the major thematic developments in Tumatumari as a complex expression of “the art of memory.”

In the following essay, Russell examines the major thematic developments in Tumatumari as a complex expression of “the art of memory.”

Its constantly evolving character notwithstanding, a remarkable unity of thought informs [Wilson Harris's] considerable opus. Two major elements seem to have shaped Harris's approach to art and his philosophy of existence: the impressive contrasts of the Guyanese landscapes, with which his survey expeditions made him familiar, and the successive waves of conquest which gave Guyana its heterogeneous population polarised for centuries into oppressors and their victims. The two, landscape and his...

In the following essay, Cobham examines the evolution of Eternity to Season from its initial publication in 1954 through its final edition in 1978, marking technical changes, reorganization of lines and phrases, omissions, and additions.

In the following essay, Cobham examines the evolution of Eternity to Season from its initial publication in 1954 through its final edition in 1978, marking technical changes, reorganization of lines and phrases, omissions, and additions.

In the following essay, Sander assesses Harris's early development as a writer by focusing on his contributions to the journal Kyk-over-al between 1945 and 1960.

In the following essay, Sander assesses Harris's early development as a writer by focusing on his contributions to the journal Kyk-over-al between 1945 and 1960.

In the following essay, Sparer discusses Harris's complex use of language, symbolism, and multiple levels of consciousness to create “a vision of the possibility of a new conception of man by man in this age of humanity's deepest crisis and disunity.”

In the following essay, Sparer discusses Harris's complex use of language, symbolism, and multiple levels of consciousness to create “a vision of the possibility of a new conception of man by man in this age of humanity's deepest crisis and disunity.”

In the following essay, Durix provides an overview of major themes in Harris's novels, concluding that his art is “a deep exploration of the paradoxes of vision, for which a new approach must constantly be invented.”

In the following essay, Durix provides an overview of major themes in Harris's novels, concluding that his art is “a deep exploration of the paradoxes of vision, for which a new approach must constantly be invented.”

In the following essay, Durix discusses the automatic writing and multi-layered narrative construction in The Angel at the Gate, describing the narrative as “a dream journey.”

In the following essay, Durix discusses the automatic writing and multi-layered narrative construction in The Angel at the Gate, describing the narrative as “a dream journey.”

In the following interview, originally conducted on 28 April 1986, Harris discusses “post-colonial allegory,” particularly in respect to Carnival.

In the following interview, originally conducted on 28 April 1986, Harris discusses “post-colonial allegory,” particularly in respect to Carnival.

In the following essay, Maes-Jelinek examines Harris's geographical and metaphorical reconception of the Caribbean and the region's potential for artistic creativity, particularly as represented in Resurrection at Sorrow Hill.

In the following essay, Maes-Jelinek examines Harris's geographical and metaphorical reconception of the Caribbean and the region's potential for artistic creativity, particularly as represented in Resurrection at Sorrow Hill.

In the following essay, Thorpe argues that The Radical Imagination represents “the distillation of Harris's thought and art,” noting that Harris is at least as influential and important a literary and cultural critic as he is a novelist.

In the following essay, Thorpe argues that The Radical Imagination represents “the distillation of Harris's thought and art,” noting that Harris is at least as influential and important a literary and cultural critic as he is a novelist.

It is from Yeats's great phrase about "the unity from a mythology that marries us to rock and hill" that we may, justifably, begin an examination of Wilson Harris's singular exploration of his corner of the West Indian experience. To Harris, this sacramental union of man and landscape remains the lost, or never established, factor in our lives. We enjoy, we exploit, we are coarsely nourished by our respective Caribbean territories—but illegitimately. We have yet to put our...

In the following essay, Emery discusses how Harris utilizes the imagery of Guyanese visual art as a metaphor for the problem of identity in The Four Banks of the River of Space and Resurrection at Sorrow Hill.

In the following essay, Emery discusses how Harris utilizes the imagery of Guyanese visual art as a metaphor for the problem of identity in The Four Banks of the River of Space and Resurrection at Sorrow Hill.

In the following essay, Boxill argues that, with Palace of the Peacock, Harris brought a new type of novel to the body of West Indian fiction—the “poetical novel.”

In the following essay, Boxill argues that, with Palace of the Peacock, Harris brought a new type of novel to the body of West Indian fiction—the “poetical novel.”

In the following essay, Drake explores Harris's writing style in terms of the relationship between literature and society.

In the following essay, Drake explores Harris's writing style in terms of the relationship between literature and society.

It is implicit in Tumatumari that man, if he is to survive the imminent danger of self-annihilation, will have to free and transform his imagination so that it will be able to work in harmony with the fundamental laws of change and re-creation, rather than, catastrophically, to resist them. Imagination is embodied in Tumatumari in the 'heroine' Prudence, this novel's representative of Man. She is the 'soul of man' awakening in a transitional age that may have already begun...

In the following essay, Murray discusses the ways Harris's works adapt and confront the methodologies of postcolonial theory.

In the following essay, Murray discusses the ways Harris's works adapt and confront the methodologies of postcolonial theory.

In the following essay, Steele explores the formal aspects of narrative in Palace of the Peacock, highlighting a number of boundaries that the narrative breaks down.

In the following essay, Steele explores the formal aspects of narrative in Palace of the Peacock, highlighting a number of boundaries that the narrative breaks down.

In the following essay, James compares the transformative effects of Harris's imagination in Palace of the Peacock to similar ones in the poetry of William Wordsworth.

In the following essay, James compares the transformative effects of Harris's imagination in Palace of the Peacock to similar ones in the poetry of William Wordsworth.

In the following essay, Cribb suggests an approach to analyzing the elements of narrative in the fiction of Harris, concluding that Harris is “both a modernist and a visionary.”

In the following essay, Cribb suggests an approach to analyzing the elements of narrative in the fiction of Harris, concluding that Harris is “both a modernist and a visionary.”

In the following essay, Raine discusses the role cultural preconceptions play in Harris's works, noting his reliance on imagination and beauty.

In the following essay, Raine discusses the role cultural preconceptions play in Harris's works, noting his reliance on imagination and beauty.

In the following essay, Adler provides a brief overview of Harris's works and career, highlighting his main themes and literary achievements.

In the following essay, Adler provides a brief overview of Harris's works and career, highlighting his main themes and literary achievements.

In the following review, Phillips offers a positive assessment of Selected Essays of Wilson Harris, praising the selections for elucidating the difficulties of Harris's fiction.

In the following review, Phillips offers a positive assessment of Selected Essays of Wilson Harris, praising the selections for elucidating the difficulties of Harris's fiction.

In his companion collections of short stories. The Sleepers of Roraima and The Age of the Rainmakers, Wilson Harris reaches through time and presents to the contemporary reader legends of the Amerindian people. It is not his intention merely to record such legends as the superstitious mythopoetic rationalizing of a "primitive" people; rather, Harris uses these legends to explore and activate the original and timeless quality of the imagination, a quality which twentieth-century man has nullifi...

In the following essay, Melville focuses on the emotional power of Harris's works, contrasting its impact with other works of contemporary fiction.

In the following essay, Melville focuses on the emotional power of Harris's works, contrasting its impact with other works of contemporary fiction.

In the following mixed review, Gurnah summarizes the main themes of Resurrection at Sorrow Hill and The Carnival Trilogy, noting that the trilogy's prose is “obstinate and difficult.”

In the following mixed review, Gurnah summarizes the main themes of Resurrection at Sorrow Hill and The Carnival Trilogy, noting that the trilogy's prose is “obstinate and difficult.”

In the following review, Gurnah discusses how Jonestown addresses broad questions of culture and freedom in the context of Guyanese history.

In the following review, Gurnah discusses how Jonestown addresses broad questions of culture and freedom in the context of Guyanese history.

Wilson Harris has done most of his work in the novel form, but his second volume of poetry, Eternity to Season, published three years after the first [Fetish], demonstrates that he is also a poet of some substance. Fetish is pretentious rather than substantial, due largely to metaphoric excesses that make for a turgid, unreadable style. Eternity to Season is much better written on the whole, but it too suffers from the old excesses in spots. It seems that Harris himself is aware of this fault since in a rec...

In the following positive review, Morton focuses on the central themes of Resurrection at Sorrow Hill and The Carnival Trilogy.

In the following positive review, Morton focuses on the central themes of Resurrection at Sorrow Hill and The Carnival Trilogy.

In the following review, Breslow discusses Resurrection at Sorrow Hill in terms of Harris's use of language and allegory.

In the following review, Breslow discusses Resurrection at Sorrow Hill in terms of Harris's use of language and allegory.

In the following review, Tayler describes Harris's writing style in The Dark Jester as “romantic modernism,” observing that the characters are “the fragmentary manifestations of a kind of cross-cultural world-spirit immanent within the mind of the dreaming narrator.”

In the following review, Tayler describes Harris's writing style in The Dark Jester as “romantic modernism,” observing that the characters are “the fragmentary manifestations of a kind of cross-cultural world-spirit immanent within the mind of the dreaming narrator.”

In the following review, Burnett offers a positive assessment of Jonestown, calling the novel a “mind-altering experience.”

In the following review, Burnett offers a positive assessment of Jonestown, calling the novel a “mind-altering experience.”

Companions of the Day and Night, his most recent novel, is another addition to the "infinite canvas" of Wilson Harris' work. There is a remarkable continuity of imagery, style and theme between his thirteen published books of fiction, which may be regarded not as separate works, but rather as several aspects of one continuing oeuvre. (p. 161) In Companions of the Day and Night, a sequel to Black Marsden, Goodrich receives from Marsden a collection of manuscripts, sculptures and painting...

In the first novel [of the "Guiana Quartet"], Palace of the Peacock, a man called Donne is going up-river to collect labour for his estate, but the reader must soon relinquish his grasp on such a workaday circumstance and commit himself, as it were, to the poetry of motion through a dark interior where words like death and dream are almost synonymous, where Donne and his crew exist in a limbo compounded of myth and reality. The disastrous journey becomes a struggle not so much to survive, one ...

[A study of Wilson Harris's early poems in Eternity to Season] reveals that his preoccupation throughout his career as a writer has been to reveal man's dual role as a finite being inhabiting a defined "season" of time, and as an infinite extension of certain human attributes (modified by landscape, climate and historical experience) which exist in eternity. Now Mr. Harris has published an essay, "Tradition and the West Indian Novel" [in his Tradition, the Writer an...

In the following review, Paris offers a positive assessment of Selected Essays of Wilson Harris, noting that the collection provides a useful introduction to Harris's work.

In the following review, Paris offers a positive assessment of Selected Essays of Wilson Harris, noting that the collection provides a useful introduction to Harris's work.

The novelist, unlike the poet, uses words which must remain for him merely a vehicle of expression, a means to a greater end. The problems of the modern novel spring from the dilemma of deciding what these ends are, or ought to be. Mr. Harris, sadly, seems to have no clear conception of the fundamental differences between these two sets of problems. First it is clear that he is obsessed with the poetic dilemma. It is sufficient to read one paragraph of [The Eye of the Scarecrow], or indeed any of his previo...

In the following review, Dasenbrock asserts that Carnival is “even denser and more abstract” than Harris's previous novels, and that it is “less a narrative than a metanarrative,” noting that death is a major theme of the novel.

In the following review, Dasenbrock asserts that Carnival is “even denser and more abstract” than Harris's previous novels, and that it is “less a narrative than a metanarrative,” noting that death is a major theme of the novel.

In The Tree of the Sun, which is a sequel to Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness, the central character attempts once again "to paint antecedents and unborn worlds"…. While in the earlier novel [Da Silva] had set out to paint his own past, he is drawn in The Tree of the Sun into the unfulfilled lives of a childless couple, once tenants of the same flat in Holland Park Gardens and long since dead, and, through these people, into the shifting drama of a universal city, and in...

The present need for what Nicholas Mosley called an "intelligent language of crisis" capable, through paradox and allusion, of holding apparent opposites together, is a practical concern of Wilson Harris's writing. His novels, a continually deepening exploration of "the problem of opposite tendencies", use paradoxical, allusive language … to convey the interdependence of opposites: "strong", sovereign cultures, "weak" or vanished civiliza...

The novels of Wilson Harris … form one ongoing whole. Each work is individual; yet the whole sequence can be seen as a continuous, ever-widening exploration of civilization and creative art. The Ascent to Omai …, for instance, took subjective consciousness to a point beyond which further communication seemed impossible. This was answered, after two excursions into the realm of folklore, with Black Marsden …, in which the creative imagination is Marsden, a trickster/illusionist whom the ...

In the following positive review, McLeod describes The Infinite Rehearsal as an apparently simple yet deeply profound novella, asserting that it is “an allegorical political parable” that explores “the universal imagination.”

In the following positive review, McLeod describes The Infinite Rehearsal as an apparently simple yet deeply profound novella, asserting that it is “an allegorical political parable” that explores “the universal imagination.”

In the following positive review, Reinhard praises The Womb of Space as an attack on the traditional critical establishment.

In the following positive review, Reinhard praises The Womb of Space as an attack on the traditional critical establishment.

[Wilson Harris] has argued against the common belief that there is no such thing as a West Indian personality: he would rather claim that study of "the West Indian in depth" reveals a series of "subtle and nebulous links, the latent ground of old and new personalities". These links are the subject matter for his difficult, imagist and metaphysical novels, Ascent to Omai being the ninth. The reader is required to have a little Latin and less Greek, also to be familiar with Rimbaud...

In the following negative review, Thorpe argues that The Angel at the Gate is only accessible to “seasoned” readers accustomed to Harris's “opaque” narrative style.

In the following negative review, Thorpe argues that The Angel at the Gate is only accessible to “seasoned” readers accustomed to Harris's “opaque” narrative style.

The West Indies is surely one of the places the English novel may look to for plasma: to Andrew Salkey, Garth St Omer, Peter Marshall, and the wildly poetic Wilson Harris, who writes in Ascent to Omai like an academic on an acid trip. Europe, Africa, the East, and the new world; a reference to Odin's ravens followed by one about Julius Reuter's pigeons—here is a writer from Guyana, a culture that is part old Europe, part the mysterious Zen East, and part slave-dark Africa, and somehow h...

Palace of the Peacock is a 150-page definition of mystical experience given in the guise of a novel. It is a difficult book to read, yet it is the very concreteness of Mr. Harris's imagery that makes its denseness so hard to penetrate…. [Although] Mr. Harris's book gives the illusion of moving forward like an ordinary novel, its real movement is downward: it is an exploration in depth. By its end nothing is changed—not even those members of the crew drowned a second time; it is s...

Harris's work, because of its syncretic approach to language and to the symbolic meaning of experience, is notoriously "difficult." Concerned more with the symbolic and contradictory—rather than the literal—meaning of language, he has produced a highly innovative novel-form…. [His] approach to the novel-as-painting, where words are used to suggest—like the brush strokes of the artist—areas of color, light, and shade, and where the writer's purpo...

Mr Harris makes me feel cloddish and insensitive. [In Palace of the Peacock he's] taken a Christian-Creation sequence of seven days and piled it round with enough complex archetypes to keep a myth-critic busy for life. On one level the setting is the savannahs and forests of British Guiana; on another the inscape of Donne, an educated atavist leading an expedition to the interior…. I never quite know what's going on in this novel…. Its claustrophobic density reminds me of The Emp...

In the following review, Mannes-Abbot offers a positive assessment of The Four Banks of the River of Space, noting that the novel “almost perfects the fabulism” of the first two novels in the Carnival trilogy.

In the following review, Mannes-Abbot offers a positive assessment of The Four Banks of the River of Space, noting that the novel “almost perfects the fabulism” of the first two novels in the Carnival trilogy.

With Palace of the Peacock Wilson Harris staked out a corner of his own in the rich new field of Caribbean writing, and his third novel, The Whole Armour, shows him still digging in the same spot. What he brings up is a mixture of local legend … and Christian allegory…. Other key influences are Hopkins and Blake…. Mr. Harris does hint towards the end that roots must be understood and accepted before the past can be buried, and his characters certainly typify different degrees of this un...

The territory [in Heartland] is remote, but not quite remote enough for Mr. Harris's purposes, which are not naturalistic; the jungle becomes a barely adequate backdrop for Stevenson's more exotic awareness of guilt and terror and his inexpressible spiritual aspirations…. Although it is a very short novel it seems to contain a lot of words. Mr. Harris's gifts are clear; they are perhaps too abundant. He writes with an almost uncontrollable fluency. We wait for him to draw breath,...