The 2000 Neustadt
International Prize
for Literature:
Jurors &
Candidates William Riggan
JUROR: CYRIL DABYDEEN
Guyana/Canada. Poet, Fiction Writer. Cyril Dabydeen was born in 1945 in Berbice, Guyana,
worked briefly as a schoolteacher in Guyana in the late
1960s, and emigrated to Canada in 1970. He earned M.A.
degrees in English and public administration from
Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and for many
years taught creative writing and literature at universi-
ties and colleges in and around Ottawa, where he con-
tinues to reside and work. His first collection of verse, Poems in Recession, was
published in Guyana in 1972. Subsequent volumes, all
issued in Canada, include Distances (1977), This Planet
Earth (1980), Islands Lovelier Than a Vision (1986), Coast-
land: Nezt, and Selected Poems 1973-1987 (1989), Stoning the
Wind (1994), and Discussing Columbus (1997), the last pref-
aced with great admiration and praise by ( 1994 Neustadt laureate
) Kamau Brathwaite. Beginning with Still Close to the Island in 1980, Daby-
deen has published several collections of stories as well,
among them To Monkey Jungle ( 1988 ), Jogging in Havana
( 1992 ), and Berbice Crossing and Other Stories ( 1996 ); and
he has also produced two novels: The Wizard Swami
( 1985 ) and Dark Swirl ( 1989 ). For his work, he has been
honored with several prestigious literary prizes, includ-
ing Guyana's highest poetry distinction, the Sardbach
Parker Gold Medal, and between 1984 and 1987 he served
as poet laureate of the city of Ottawa. Since 1989, his critical writing has included several
reviews and articles for "WLT", most recently "Places We
Come From: Voices of Caribbean Canadian Writers (in
English) and Multicultural Contexts" in a special num-
ber on contemporary Canadian literatures (Spring 1999),
and the autobiographical sketch "Where Doth the
Berbice Run" ( Summer 1994 ).
CANDIDATE: WILSON HARRIS
Guyana/England. Novelist, Essayist, Poet. (Theodore) Wilson Harris was born in 1921 in New
Amsterdam, Guyana, and was educated at Queen's Col-
lege in Georgetown. During the 1950s he worked for sev-
eral years as a government surveyor, largely in the
Guyanese interior, an experience which has had a signif-
icant influence on his writing. He moved to London in
1959, then to Essex in 1979, and although he travels exten-
sively to lecture and read, he continues to reside in Eng-
land. Harris's first published writings were such privately
printed verse collections as Fetish ( 1951 ) and Eternity to
Season ( 1952 ), but it is as the innovative author of nearly
two dozen richly metaphorical and intellectually chal-
lenging novels that he has made his reputation. Fired
both by extensive readings of classical literature and the
work of such figures as Jung and by his experiences
amid the savannahs, jungles, and river valleys of the
South American backlands, Harris began producing --
in such novels as Palace of the Peacock ( 1960 ), The Eye of
the Scarecrow ( 1965 ), The Waiting Room ( 1967 ), and The Age
of the Rainmakers ( 1971 ) -- an impressive body of work
that uses physical landscape metaphorically and allegor-
ically to dramatize the workings of the human psyche
and convey a vision of a multiracial society and inter-
penetrating cultures. Several kaleidoscopic works set in
London, Scotland, Mexico, and elsewhere followed --
Marsden ( 1972 ), The Tree of Life ( 1978 ), The Angel at the Gate
( 1982 ), Carnival ( 1985 ), The Infinite Rehearsal ( 1987 ) -- dis-
playing a profound practical concern for human sur-
vival through the interaction of past and present, art and
religion, literature and myth. Resurrection at Sorrow Hill
( 1993 ) returns to Guyana, specifically to an insane asy-
lum in a particularly remote region, to enact a densely
allegorical tale of Marxism's attacks on Christianity and
the endurance of the human spirit. Jonestown ( 1996 ) is a
fictional contemplation of the mass suicide that took the
lives of the Reverend Jim Jones and his followers in the
Guyanese bush in the late 1980s. Harris has also produced several volumes of signifi-
cant critical writings, including Tradition, the Writer, and
Society ( 1967 ) and The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural
Imagination ( 1983 ). Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The
Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination ( 1999 ) combines sev-
eral previously collected pieces with more than a dozen
that had appeared only in journals or anthologies. In proposing Harris for the 2000 Neustadt Prize, the
Guyanese-Canadian writer Cyril Dabydeen states: "Har-
ris's characters span all races and creeds, continually
reinforcing New World contexts of civilizations, past
and present, juxtaposing European and non-European
alike, mixed with settings of African, Asian, and Amer- -91- | 
