The Tree of the Sun, first published in 1978, begins where Wilson Harris's previous novel Da Silva da Silva's Cultivated Wilderness ended, and thus forms a sequel.

The London-dwelling Brazilian painter Da Silva is deeply moved by his wife's pregnancy after eight years of marriage. As he contemplates the child to be born he recalls a painting he began on the very morning he and his wife made love and conception occurred: a painting that contained a growing image. This becomes the evolving 'foetus' of imagination through which Da Silva begins to relate himself and his wife to the former (childless) tenants of their Kensington flat.

'I must admire the imagination and force of Wilson Harris' writing.' Kevin Cully, Tribune