The present need for what Nicholas Mosley called an "intelligent language of crisis" capable, through paradox and allusion, of holding apparent opposites together, is a practical concern of Wilson Harris's writing. His novels, a continually deepening exploration of "the problem of opposite tendencies", use paradoxical, allusive language … to convey the interdependence of opposites: "strong", sovereign cultures, "weak" or vanished civilizations.

The hero of Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness is married and lives in a Kensington flat. He is a composite man. Born in Brazil of Spanish, Portuguese and African stock, orphaned early, he survives cyclone and flood and is adopted by the British ambassador. He grows up in England with access to his rich benefactor's library and thrives on a varied cultural diet; an interest in painting develops and he gradually becomes convinced that his "parentless" condition obliges him to create, to "paint" himself and his world...