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A palace on stilts: Guyanese novelist

 
Chrissy 2019-03-09 10:07:36 

Wilson Harris returns to life in Trinidad & Tobago's Carnival
Magnificent!

The great poet and novelist Wilson Harris died exactly one year ago. Or did he? Like one of his characters, Harris has come back. He has returned in the form of a band of moko jumbies — a motley crew of painted spirits striding high above us on wooden stilts, roaming the concrete jungle of Port of Spain, haunting Trinidad’s Carnival.

This is “Palace of the Peacock”, a mas[querade] by Alan Vaughan’s Moko Sõmõkow band, based on Harris’ dense, beautiful and wildly ambitious novel of the same name.

Watching the moko jumbies leave their mas camp at Erthig Road, Belmont, the mood of Harris’ novel is palpable. Just as the book’s band of crusaders embark on an epic quest, these masqueraders set out for the wide green expanse of parkland at the centre of the city, the Queen’s Park Savannah.

Why a novel? Why bring a “mas” based on a book? And a book by an author with a style as dense as Wilson Harris’?