Palace of the Peacock

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

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.

'The Guyanese William Blake . [Such] poetic intensity.' — Angela Carter
'One of the great originals ... Visionary ... Dazzlingly illuminating.' — Guardian
'Staggering ... Both brilliant and terrifying.' — The Times

ISBN: 9780571368044 | Published: 5 January 2022 (first published 1960) | Paperback | 160 pages