Palace of the Peacock

Faber Editions

By: Wilson Harris, Jamaica Kincaid - introduction

Narrated by: Don Warrington

A radical landmark in Caribbean literature, reissued with a new foreword by Jamaica Kincaid to mark Wilson Harris' centenary: this visionary masterpiece tracing the dreamlike voyage of a riverboat crew through the jungle defies definition sixty years on.

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. Donne, their wild, domineering leader is 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; hallucinatory prose poem; modern myth; elegy to victims of colonial conquest: Wilson Harris' visionary masterpiece has defied definition for over sixty years, and is reissued for a new generation of readers.

'An exhilarating experience ... Makes visions real and reality visions ... Genius.' Jamaica Kincaid

'The Guyanese William Blake . [Such] poetic intensity.' Angela Carter

'Staggering ... Brilliant and terrifying.' The Times

'Amazing ... Masterly ... Near-miraculous.' Observer

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

'Perhaps the most inimitable [writer] produced in the English-speaking Caribbean.' Fred D'Aguiar

'An extraordinary writer ... Courageous and visionary ... It speaks to us in tongues.' Pauline Melville

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