Palace of the Peacock was the first published novel of (Sir Theodore) Wilson Harris (b. 1921) and remains his most widely read. Written after Harris had left British Guiana, later Guyana, and settled in Britain in 1959, it was accepted for Faber and Faber by T.S. Eliot and published in 1960. Palace of the Peacock is the first in a series of four novels — the others being The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963) — that would later be collected in a single volume as The Guyana Quartet (1985). None of Harris’s fictional works contains a straightforwardly linear and realistic narrative, and Palace of the Peacock is written in a dense symbolic style. C.. ontaining many different layers of meaning, the novel can be best described...
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Citation: Otto, Melanie. "Palace of the Peacock". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 June 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=15487, accessed 09 June 2026.]
