Wilson Harris - Biography

Biography

Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then called British Guiana. After studying at Queen's College in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, he became a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannas and rain forests he gained during his time as a surveyor formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction.

Between 1945 and 1961, Harris was a regular contributor of stories, poems and essays to Kyk-over-Al literary magazine and was part of a group of Guyanese intellectuals that included Martin Carter and Ivan Van Sertima.

Harris came to England in 1959 and published his first novel Palace of the Peacock in 1960. This became the first of a quartet of novels, The Guyana Quartet, which includes The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963). He subsequently wrote the Carnival trilogy: Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990).

His most recent novels include Jonestown (1996), which tells of the mass-suicide of followers of cult leader Jim Jones, The Dark Jester (2001), his latest semi-autobiographical novel, The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and The Ghost of Memory (2006).

Harris also writes non-fiction and critical essays and has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liège (2001). He has twice won the Guyana Prize for Literature.

Harris was knighted in June 2010 during the Queen Elizabeth II Birthday Honours.