Message of Condolence from His Excellency, David Granger, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana on the passing of Sir Theodore Wilson Harris- March 24,1921- March 8, 2018

Georgetown, Guyana – (March 8, 2018His Excellency David Granger, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana extends heartfelt condolences at the passing of eminent Guyanese writer Sir Theodore Wilson Harris.

Theodore Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam, East Berbice- Corentyne (Region Six). He attended Queen’s College from 1932-1937. From 1945 to 1959 he worked as a government surveyor, before taking up a career as lecturer and writer. The knowledge of the savannahs and rainforests he gained during his time as a surveyor formed the setting for many of his books, with the Guyanese landscape dominating his fiction.

Wilson Harris travelled England in 1959 and published his first novel Palace of the Peacock in 1960. This became the first of a quartet of novels, The Guyana Quartet, which includes The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963). He subsequently wrote the Carnival trilogy: Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987) and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990).

Wilson Harris’s most recent novels include Jonestown (1996), which tells of the mass-suicide of followers of cult leader Jim Jones, The Dark Jester (2001), his latest semi-autobiographical novel, The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and The Ghost of Memory (2006).

Wilson Harris also wrote non-fiction and critical essays and was awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including the University of the West Indies in 1984 and the University of Liège in 2001.

Wilson Harris was the winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature on two occasions (1987 and 2002).

For his services to literature, Wilson Harris was knighted By Queen Elizabeth II in June 2010. In 2014, Sir Wilson Harris won a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

His Excellency David Granger President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana extends heartfelt sympathy to the children, Professor E. Nigel Harris, Alexis, Denise and Michael Harris, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the late Sir Wilson Harris.

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