Palace of the Peacock - Wilson Harris

Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris / ISBN 9780571368044 / 136-page paperback with flaps from Faber Editions series (UK)

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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