The novels of Wilson Harris … form one ongoing whole. Each work is individual; yet the whole sequence can be seen as a continuous, ever-widening exploration of civilization and creative art. The Ascent to Omai …, for instance, took subjective consciousness to a point beyond which further communication seemed impossible. This was answered, after two excursions into the realm of folklore, with Black Marsden …, in which the creative imagination is Marsden, a trickster/illusionist whom the artist hero finally throws into the street. In Companions of the Day and Night the hero of Black Marsden is sent manuscripts by Marsden himself which he orders into an assertion of the creative interpenetration of history and imagination….

Wilson Harris [recently] explained his present preoccupation with moments in which a suppressed cultural pattern erupts through a decaying later one. In Black Marsden, it was Scottish history in Edinburgh. In [Companions of the Day...