Description

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