![]() First edition | |
Author | Wilson Harris |
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Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Historiographic metafiction, Magical realism |
Publisher | Faber & Faber |
Publication date | 1960 |
Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
Followed by | The Far Journey of Oudin (1961) |
Palace of the Peacock (1960) is the first novel by Guyanese writer Wilson Harris. [1] [2] It is considered an important early postcolonial novel [3] and a canonical text in Caribbean literary studies. [4] The novel is the first in Harris's "Guyana Quartet" of novels, which also include The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962) and The Secret Ladder (1963).
The novel is set in the sixteenth century and presents the narrative of a group of men from different ethnic backgrounds making their way up a dangerous and turbulent river within the jungles of Guyana. The party is led by a man named Donne, a cruel second-generation European colonialist who was born in Guyana, and who is hunting for a woman called Mariella who has run away from him. Over the course of the journey it becomes apparent that it is not the first time the men have tried to make their way up this river and that last time they attempted to traverse the river they were all drowned. It is suggested that they now exist in a liminal or spectral state between life and death. The events of the narrative are narrated by a first person narrator who is identified simply as "Dreamer" in the opening pages of the novel. Dreamer's presence becomes increasingly oblique as the novel progresses.
The novel was written in 1959 after Wilson Harris had moved to London from Guyana. The manuscript for the novel was accepted for publication by T. S. Eliot. [5]
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing, the Congo Free State—the location of the large and economically important Congo River—was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
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Sir Theodore Wilson Harris was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English.
Pauline Melville FRSL is an English-Guyanese writer and former actress of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, who is currently based in London, England. Among awards she has received for her writing – which encompasses short stories, novels and essays – are the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guyana Prize for Literature. Salman Rushdie has said of Melville: "I believe her to be one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years."
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Michael Arthur Gilkes was a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer. He was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.
Joyce Sparer Adler was an American critic, playwright, and teacher. She was a founding member of the faculty of the University of Guyana, writer of important critical analyses of Wilson Harris and Herman Melville, and 1988 president of the Melville Society.
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