The Eye of the Scarecrow

Reflecting on three distinct periods in the unnamed narrator's life in Guyana from the 1920s to the 1940s, this novel illustrates the various incidents that gradually change his perception of the world. After he experiences a disconcerting vision regarding one of his friends, he is rendered incapable of reviewing his own history until many years later, when this fictional account begins a voyage through his consciousness. This cyclical tale removes the props of linear narrative and conventional characterization, offering a compensating Proustian richness of sensuous associations. This powerful exploration of memory also delves into a political dimension, questioning the connection between the 1948 anti-colonial movement's challenge of British power over Guyanese lives and the 1964 civil war between Africans and Indians in the South American state.

Wilson Harris is the author of Eternity to Season, Fetish, The Ghost of Memory, Palace of the Peacock, and The Womb of Space. Michael Mitchell is an associate fellow at the University of Warwick.