SOURCE: Mannes-Abbott, Guy. “Post-Colonial Identity.” New Statesman & Society 3, no. 117 (7 September 1990): 46–47.

In the following review, Mannes-Abbot offers a positive assessment of The Four Banks of the River of Space, noting that the novel “almost perfects the fabulism” of the first two novels in the Carnival trilogy.

Wilson Harris has come to that stage in a writing life where The Four Banks is both a manifesto and exhibition of his poetic craft. If it lacks Zameenzad's sheer story-telling exuberance, it almost perfects the fabulism developed in the first two parts of this trilogy. Harris's alter ego is “Anselm,” and this is his book of dreams. In it, he wanders through history as a “living dreamer” to re-aquaint himself with his family past in Guyana. He “invokes them as live absences … they seem to paint one (as one paints them).” They become strategic “stepping stones” in the “abysses” left in his...