SOURCE: Boxill, Anthony. “Wilson Harris's Palace of the Peacock: A New Dimension in West Indian Fiction.” CLA Journal 14, no. 4 (June 1971): 380–86.

In the following essay, Boxill argues that, with Palace of the Peacock, Harris brought a new type of novel to the body of West Indian fiction—the “poetical novel.”

When Wilson Harris' Palace of the Peacock was published in 1960, a new kind of novel was added to the repertoire of West Indian fiction—the poetical novel. This does not mean that poetry has been lacking in the West Indian novel. There are passages of lyrical beauty in so many of the novels that it would be tedious to list them. George Lamming is often referred to as primarily a poet who has turned to prose. Indeed, there is much evidence of this in his novels, but although poetic passages abound in Lamming not one of his novels leaves...