The Lonely Londoners

Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels 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. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Susheila Nasta. '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

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.

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.

'Irreverent, spirited ... a seriously funny novel' New York Review of Books Sitting in his cramped basement room in Brixton, Battersby dreams of money, women, a T-bone steak - and a place to call his own. So he and a group of friends decide to save up and buy a house together. But amid grasping landlords, the temptations of spending money and the less-than-welcoming attitude of the Mother Country, can this motley group of hustlers and schemers, Trinidadians and Jamaicans, men and women make their dreams a reality? 'Selvon's meticulously observed narratives of displaced Londoners' lives created a template for how to write about migrant, and postmigrant, London for countless writers who have followed in his wake, including Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith' Caryl Phillips

It has been more than 25 years since Moses Aloetta became one of the 'Lonely Londoners' in the novel of that name. Now - though an avowed Anglophile - he hankers for Trinidad, for sunshine, Carnival, and rum punch. With characteristic irony and delicacy of touch, Sam Selvon tells the story of Moses' re-encounter with his native land. This edition of the novel includes a new introduction to Selvon's life and work by Susheila Nasta, as well as a preface by 'Moses' that was written in 1992 for the first US edition of the work. This edition of Moses Migrating includes a new introduction to Selvon's life and work by Susheila Nasta, as well as a preface by 'Moses' that was written in 1992 for the first US edition of the work.

"Elegant . . . A superb suspense novel, imbued with moral and narrative complexity and an omnipresent low cloud cover of dread.” —Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post Two British men meet by chance in Berlin. Robert is trying and failing to finish his next book while balancing his responsibilities as a husband and father. Patrick, a recent arrival in the city, is secretive about his past, but eventually reveals that he has been ghostwriting the autobiography of a Russian oligarch. The oligarch has turned up dead, and Patrick claims to be a hunted man himself. Although Robert doubts the truth of Patrick’s story, it fascinates him, and he thinks it might hold the key to his own foundering novel. Working to gain the other man’s trust, Robert draws out the details of Patrick’s past while ensnaring himself ever more tightly in what might be either a fantasist’s creation or a lethal international plot. Through an elegant existential game of cat and mouse, Chris Power’s A Lonely Man depicts an attempt to create art at the cost of empathy. Robert must decide what is his for the taking—and whether some stories are too dangerous to tell.

The first cultural history of African, Asian, and Caribbean immigrants to the United Kingdom from 1948 to the present

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.