The Epic Hero in Wilson Harris’s Palace of the Peacock

Wilson Harris, Caribbean author of poems, essays, and twenty-four novels, repeatedly returns to the ecologically diverse and sparsely populated interior of Guyana in his writing. His first novel, Palace of the Peacock (1960), published in the unstable transition period between self-rule and independence, is set in the Guyanese rainforest rather than the politically charged coastal and urban spaces of the colony. Harris deploys the “epic stratagem” of the hero to negotiate the social and ecological challenges that face Guyana on the cusp of independence. Through the creolization and multiplying of heroic figures in the text, the novel envisions a critical reorientation to capitalism and alterity.