Bøker av Sam Selvon

London will do for you for now... And I will do for London. London, 1956. Newly arrived from Trinidad, Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver is impatient to start his new life. Carrying just pyjamas and a toothbrush, he bursts through Moses Aloetta's door only to find Moses and his friends already deflated by city life. Will the London fog dampen Galahad's dreams? Or will these Lonely Londoners make a home in a city that sees them as a threat?In the first stage adaptation of Sam Selvon's iconic novel about the Windrush Generation, Roy Williams sweeps us back in time to shine a new light on London, friendship, and what we call home. This edition of The Lonely Londoners is published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Jermyn Street Theatre in February 2024.

'A delightful book, a pleasure to read and reflect over afterwards ... for humour, sprightliness and downright exuberance at being alive' Sunday Times'You could be lonely as hell in the city, then one day you look around you and you realise everybody else is lonely too'This irresistible, bittersweet collection of short stories from the supreme chronicler of West Indian lives in Britain brings together two worlds: Trinidad and London. Here is an illicit love affair on a plantation, gossip and rivalry between village washerwomen, a boy rebelling against his parents' traditions. Here too is life after leaving for England: hustling for work, eking out money for the gas meter in winter, dancing in clubs, discovering romance in a night-time park, experiencing unexpected kindness, dreams and disenchantment.

Sam Selvon s Moses Ascending depicts West Indian Immigration in England. Moses, a Trinidadian who has been in England for some years now represents immigrants who come from all corners of the world to seek a better life. Like many immigrants he is hard-working. After years of living in a dingy basement he saves up enough money to buy a house. Moses calls this his dream house in the beginning of the book but later on he realizes that the house is a piece of garbage.

The first Indian indentured laborers came to the Caribbean more than150 years ago, and their traditional values have had to confront a rapidly changing world in 20th century Trinidad. "Highway in the Sun" tells the story of Tiger and Urmilla's first year of marriage away from their extended family and their struggles relating to their new Afro-Creole neighbors in the suburbs of Port of Spain. In "Home Sweet India," Johnny is dismayed by his loss of culture and threatened by the emergence of Creole nationalism, and plans to return to India. In "Turn Again Tiger," Tiger learns that he must not turn his back on his Indian past. These plays demonstrate the choices Indians in the Caribbean must make between tradition and creolization.

Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Susheila Nasta.At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the sight of a black face, has Galahad met his Waterloo? But the irrepressible newcomer cannot be cast down. He and all the other lonely new Londoners - from shiftless Cap to Tolroy, whose family has descended on him from Jamaica - must try to create a new life for themselves. As pessimistic 'old veteran' Moses watches their attempts, they gradually learn to survive and come to love the heady excitements of London.Sam Selvon (b. 1923) was born in San Fernando, Trinidad. In 1950 Selvon left Trinidad for the UK where after hard times of survival he established himself as a writer with A Brighter Sun (1952), An Island is a World (1955), The Lonely Londoners (1956), Ways of Sunlight (1957), Turn Again Tiger (1958), I Hear Thunder (1963), The Housing Lark (1965), The Plains of Caroni (1970), Moses Ascending (1975) and Moses Migrating (1983).If you enjoyed The Lonely Londoners, you might like Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark or Shiva Naipaul's Fireflies, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'His Lonely Londoners has acquired a classics status since it appeared in 1956 as the definitive novel about London's West Indians'Financial Times'The unforgettable picaresque ... a vernacular comedy of pathos'Guardian