29oCIconic Guyanese writer Harris dies
Guyanese writer Sir Wilson Harris died today in the United Kingdom, where he had lived since 1959.
He wrote 26 novels, poetry, essays and speeches.
Perhaps his best-known work was Palace of the Peacock (1960), considered an important early postcolonial novel and a canonical Caribbean text. It was the first in his Guyana Quartet of novels.
Harris won numerous prizes, including the Guyana Prize for Literature (1987 and 2002), The Premio Mondello dei Cinque Continenti award (1992), and the Ainsfeld-Wolf Book Award (2014). He was awarded honorary degrees from the University of the West Indies (1984) and the University of Liege in Belgium(2001). In 2010, he was knighted by the queen.