The Guyana Quartet (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Wilson Harris
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Work: Mythic realism
- Time of Work: The twentieth century, after the colonization of Guiana
- Setting: Guiana
- Principal Characters: The Dreaming I, Donne, Cameron, Schomburgh, Vigilance, Carroll, Wishrop, Jennings, Mariella, The Crew, Oudin, Ram, Mohammed, Hassan, Kaiser, Rajah, Mohammed’s Father, Abram, Cristo, Sharon, Magda, Peet, Mattias, Fenwick, Poseidon, Jordan, Bryant, Weng, Chiung
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Mythological literature
- Subjects: Voyages, Blacks, Colonies or colonization, Race, Twentieth century, Nature, Other worlds, Virginity or virgins, Ethnic groups, Fantasy, Imagination, Antichrist figures, Assassins, hit men, or contract killers, Forests or forestry, Guyana or Guyanese people, India or East Indian people, Jungles or rain forests, Rivers or waterways
- Locales: Guyana
The Novels
In The Guyana Quartet, Wilson Harris transforms the history and landscape of his native land into myth. By allowing the creative imagination to travel backward and forward through time, he examines the history and landscape of his country in the hope of finding the true identity of his people (and the people of the Caribbean in general) and the potential for future development. The journey, moreover, becomes a quest for “the essential unity within the most bitter forms of latent and active historical diversity,” as Harris himself puts it. It is indeed a...
[The entire page is 5018 words long]
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