The book opens with a description reminiscent of the foggy London of Charles Dickens, but transmuted into 1956 and repurposed in the flow of Selvon's dialect. Moses has lived in London for 10 years and tonight is going to meet a new arrival from Trinidad at Waterloo station, where the boat train comes in. And so opens a lyrical, fluid story of experience, hopes, histories and realities; sharp, witty, bleak, engaging - the experience of hundreds of men arriving in London in search of a prosperous future, facing the harsh realities of living hand to mouth, of racism, and bone-chilling weather.
"'These days, ... every shipload is big news, and the English people don't like the boys coming to England to work and live.'
'Why is that?' Galahad ask.
'Well, as far as I could figure, they frighten that we get job in front of them, though that does never happen. The other thing is that they just don't like black people, and don't ask me why, because that is a question that bigger brains than mine trying to find out from way back.'
'Things as bad over here as in America?' Galahad ask.
'That is a point the boys always debating,' Moses say."
This is Book 2 in the Caribbean Modern Classics Series. See all Caribbean Modern Classics books here.
See More Educational: English literature
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