The Lonely Londoners, like most of Selvon's later work, focuses on the migration of West Indians to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and tells, mostly in anecdotal form, the daily experience of settlers from Africa and the Caribbean. Selvon also illustrates the panoply of different subcultures that exist within London, as with any major city, due to class and racial boundaries. In many ways, his books are the precursors to works such as White Teeth  by Zadie Smith and The Buddha of Suburbia  by Hanif Kureishi. Selvon explained: "When I wrote the novel that became The Lonely Londoners, I tried to recapture a certain quality in West Indian everyday life. I had in store a number of wonderful anecdotes and could put them into focus, but I had difficulty starting the novel in straight English. The people I wanted to describe were entertaining people indeed, but I could not really move. At that stage, I had written the narrative in English and most of the dialogues in dialect. Then I started both narrative and dialogue in dialect and the novel just shot along."Fabre, Michel, "Samuel Selvon: Interviews and Conversations", in Susheila Nasta (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon, Washington: Three Continents Press, 1988; p. 66. 20 May 2018, on what would have been his 95th birthday, he was honored with a Google Doodle.
The Lonely Londoners, like most of Selvon's later work, focuses on the migration of West Indians to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and tells, mostly in anecdotal form, the daily experience of settlers from Africa and the Caribbean. Selvon also illustrates the panoply of different subcultures that exist within London, as with any major city, due to class and racial boundaries. In many ways, his books are the precursors to works such as White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith and The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) by Hanif Kureishi. Selvon explained: "When I wrote the novel that became The Lonely Londoners, I tried to recapture a certain quality in West Indian everyday life. I had in store a number of wonderful anecdotes and could put them into focus, but I had difficulty starting the novel in straight English. The people I wanted to describe were entertaining people indeed, but I could not really move. At that stage, I had written the narrative in English and most of the dialogues in dialect. Then I started both narrative and dialogue in dialect and the novel just shot along."Fabre, Michel, "Samuel Selvon: Interviews and Conversations", in Susheila Nasta (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon, Washington: Three Continents Press, 1988; p. 66. On what would have been his 95th birthday, 20 May 2018, Selvon was honoured with a Google Doodle.
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(2000)
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20 May 2018, on
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he was honored
20 May 2018, Selvon was honoured