Harris, Wilson

Abstract

Wilson Harris is a Guyanese author whose fiction, poetry, and critical essays have established him as a highly influential and distinctive voice in the fields of Caribbean literature and postcolonial studies. Born in Guyana in 1921, he has produced 23 novels, stretching from Palace of the Peacock in 1960 to The Ghost of Memory in 2006. His work is characterized by a densely poetic, anti‐realist literary style and an emphasis on the redemptive potential of the imagination. In addition to his novels, his important theoretical writings on creolization and cross‐culturalism have provoked much discussion in postcolonial studies. More recently, his emphasis on the mutually constitutive relationship between human and extra‐human natures has drawn attention from the field of postcolonial ecocriticism.