Palace of the Peacock (Faber Editions)

Wilson Harris

The visionary masterpiece: a riverboat crew’s dreamlike jungle voyage, celebrated by Jamaica Kincaid.

28 in stock

£7.99
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780571368044
Date Published
04.11.2021
Delivery
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Summary

The visionary masterpiece, tracing a riverboat crew’s dreamlike jungle voyage …
‘My new all time favourite book … A magnificent, breathtaking and terrifying novel.’ Tsitsi Dangarembga
‘An exhilarating experience … Makes visions real and reality visions … Genius.’ Jamaica Kincaid
‘A masterpiece: I love this book for its language, adventure and wisdoms.’ 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

Critic Reviews

My new all time favourite book ... A magnificent, breathtaking and terrifying novel ... Harris' language mesmerizes like a nightmare.

Tsitsi Dangarembga
Critic Reviews

An exhilarating experience ... Makes visions real and reality visions ... Breathtaking ... Genius.

Jamaica Kincaid
Critic Reviews

A masterpiece: I love this book for its language, adventure and wisdoms: how it reverences and unearths another time.

Monique Roffey
Critic Reviews

Revel in the inviolate, ever-deepening mystery of Wilson Harris’s work.

Jeet Thayil
Critic Reviews

The Guyanese William Blake … [Such] poetic intensity.

Critic Reviews

One of the great originals ... Visionary ... Dazzlingly illuminating.

Guardian
WilsonHarris

Sir Wilson Harris was a prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and lecturer. Born in 1921 in British Guiana, his father died when he was two and his stepfather disappeared into the rainforests in 1929. He began working as a government surveyor in 1942 and led expeditions into the Amazonian interior for almost 15 years. In 1959 he left for England to…

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WilsonHarris
Wilson Harris credit Alessandra Lippuci photo
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