All of the nominations so far are interesting to me and I'd support any of them, but I'll use my last two nominations on these:
The Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
A tale of a doomed crew beating their way up-river through the jungles of Guyana.
Wilson Harris was born in 1921 in the former colony of British Guiana. He was a land surveyor before leaving for England in 1959 to become a full-time writer. His exploration of the dense forests, rivers and vast savannahs of the Guyanese hinterland features prominently in the settings of his fiction. Harris's novels are complex, alluding to diverse mythologies from different cultures, and eschew conventional narration in favour of shifting interwoven voices.
I normally wouldn't include customer reviews, but in lieu of any critic's reviews I will. The three customer reviews at Amazon are all 5-star. One says, "Wilson Harris produces, in the most poetic prose, the images, traditions, and myths of the the Carribean." Another says, "Wilson Harris, born in 1921 in what was then British Guiana and is now Guyana, is one of the most unflinchingly poetic British novelists of the twentieth century." And the third says, "Wilson Harris' epic charts the history of the Caribbean through the metaphor of Donne's crew as they travel into a West Indian "heart of darkness.""
One also gives a general plot description: 'The novel consists of four books, each set off by a short quotation from a major poet - Yeats, Donne, and two by Hopkins. The opening book, "Horseman, Pass By" sets the basic plot in motion, a boat is journeying up the river through the Guyanese rain forest. The second book, "The Mission of Mariella" finds the Armeridian village of Mariella deserted, and the crew, finding an old native woman, enlists her forceably as guide. In the novel's longest book, "The Second Death", the men travel further and further upstream looking for the missing villagers. After a series of deaths and further confusion the novel evolves into a vast bewildering dream, "Paling of Ancestors"."
Here is the Amazon link.
In The Castle of My Skin by George Lamming
Spoiler:
A "coming of age" novel that balances innocence against the decadence of colonialism. It is vivid, poetic, insightful, autobiographical and often humorous.
From Amazon:
George Lamming's "In the Castle of My Skin" skilfully depicts the Barbadian psyche. Set against the backdrop of the 1930s riots which helped to pave the way for Independence and the modern Barbados, through the eyes of a young boy, Lamming portrays the social, racial, political and urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of Political Independence from Britain. Required reading for all Caribbean people. The novel also offers non-Barbadians and non-Caribbean people insight into the modern social history of Barbados and the Caribbean. 'A writer of the people one is back again in the pages of Huckleberry Finn_ the fundamental book of civilisation Mr Lamming captures the myth-making and myth-dissolving mind of childhood' NEW STATESMAN 'Its poetic imaginative writing has never been surpassed' TRIBUNE 'A striking piece of work, a rich and memorable feat of imaginative interpretation' THE SPECTATOR 'He produces anecdote after anecdote, rich and riotous.' THE TIMES 'There is not a stock figure in the story fluent, poetical, sophisticated.' THE SUNDAY TIMES
George Lamming was born June 8, 1927 in Carrington's Village, Barbados. He attended Combermere High School. He left Barbados for Trinidad in 1946 to become a teacher, four years later he was to migrate to England to become a writer. In the Castle of My Skin was completed within two years of his arrival in London.
Here is the Amazon link.