ABSTRACT
Wilson Harris's fictional debut in 1960 with Palace of the Peacock has proved increasingly significant within the development of Caribbean literature. Harris himself has written some twenty-one novels, besides a major body of essays, lectures and critical works, by the end of 1997. Harris remains most easily accessible through his early writing. The volumes of the 'Guyanese Quartet' explore individual facets of that country's national character which make up Donne's crew in the already examined Palace of the Peacock. By the mid-1960s, political events in Guyana had destroyed Harris's hopes of national regeneration, andThe Eye of the Scarecrow marks Harris's decisive shift towards a 'drama of consciousness'. The story introduces a recurrent Harris character, 'Idiot Namless', the neutral, objective observer, and also 'N'. Resurrection at Sorrow Hill and Jonestown come full circle and return to the landscapes of the Guyanese Quartet.
