Ascent to Omai

Wilson Harris’s ninth novel, first published in 1970, is a work of the most revolutionary and far-reaching kind of science or speculative fiction. Victor is in search of his father, Adam, once a revolutionary worker who was sent to prison many years ago for burning down the factory he worked in. Since then Victor has lost touch with him, but suspects he is living as a pork-knocker (gold prospector) in the remote Cuyuni-Mazaruni district of Guyana. As he climbs in search of his father, Victor both revisits his past relationship with him and replays his father’s trial, which also becomes his own. Victor’s search is for spiritual grace, for the compensations of love and the glimmerings of a true understanding of the world he exists in, and the reader is invited to share in Victor’s struggling ascent to consciousness, knowing that it can never be other than provisional.

Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in British Guiana, with a background which embraces African, European and Amerindian ancestry. He attended Guyana's premier school, Queen's College, between 1934-1939. Harris was a regular contributor of stories, poems and essays to Kyk-over-Al. His first publication was a chapbook of poems, Fetish, (1951) under the pseudonym Kona Waruk. Harris's first published novel was Palace of the Peacock (1969), followed by a further 23 novels, most recently The Ghost of Memory (2006). Harris left Guyana for the UK in 1959, where he was much in demand as visiting professor and writer in residence at many leading universities.