Harris can’t come for prize, suggests High Commission in London
Stabroek News
February 13, 2003
Thrice winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature,the octogenarian novelist Wilson Harris rejected as ‘totally absurd’ the idea that he might be back in his native land to accept his award in an interview with the Stabroek News from his Chelmsford, England home.
The organisers of the Guyana Prize for literature,the most prestigious literary award to Guyanese at home and abroad, had announced at the prize-giving last Sunday night at the National Cultural Centre in Georgetown that Harris would be back ‘in another two weeks’ to collect his special personal prize. Harris says, simply, this is not the case.
He only learned of the award nine days ago in a phone call from Prize Supremo Al Creighton and he says he never indicated any desire to return to Guyana which he last visited decades ago. He told me that he was ‘ very privileged’ to be given the prize but would be happy to accept, if it could be arranged, at a special ceremony at the Guyana High Commission in London later this year. Alternatively, he suggested to the organiser that they delay the prize giving until either the special academic conference devoted to his work at the Institute of Caribbean studies at Warwick University in May or the publication of his latest book in August of this year.
Harris is now internationally recognised as a truly great novelist, a man who may have reshaped the form of the English novel. The octogenarian is the V.S. Naipaul of the Guyanese literar oeuvre.
