In The Tree of the Sun, which is a sequel to Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness, the central character attempts once again "to paint antecedents and unborn worlds"…. While in the earlier novel [Da Silva] had set out to paint his own past, he is drawn in The Tree of the Sun into the unfulfilled lives of a childless couple, once tenants of the same flat in Holland Park Gardens and long since dead, and, through these people, into the shifting drama of a universal city, and into West Indian culture and history.

Da Silva finds Francis's unfinished book and Julia's large collection of letters hidden in a hole in the wall of the flat, and with the help of his wife, Jen, who is two month; pregnant, he begins to edit the pages, and to sketch and paint these lovers. In this way he becomes involved...