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.
In The Past Few Years Much Theoretical Debate Has Explored Several Cultural Issues In The Anglophone Caribbean, Focusing On The Central Experience Of Colonialism As Well As On The Contemporary Postcolonial Condition And The Possible Formation Of Neo-Colonial Configurations.Some Of The Constituent Traits Of The Caribbean Experience Are Dealt With In This Study, Such As The Relationship Between The Caribbean And Great Britain From A Cultural And Literary Perspective In The Twentieth Century, Multiculturalism And Ethnicity, The Interplay Of Orality And Literature And An Investigation Of Linguistic Issues, In Particular The Creolization Of The English Language Under World Influences.Different Strands Are Brought Together In The Analysis Of Sam Selvon S London Trilogy The Lonely Londoners, Moses Ascending And Moses Migrating, Considering Questions Of Identity For Ex-Colonials In The Crucial Years Between The End Of World War Ii And The 1980S In Britain, Relationships Between European Versus African And Indian Cultural Heritage, Clash Of Cultures As Represented Via Language, Ideas Of National Identity As An Imaginative Process Also Reflecting Dynamics Of Power Inside Society.The Use Of Creole Represents An Ideal Clinging To Caribbean Modes Of Cultural Survival, Which Is Also Buttressed By The Postcolonial Contamination Of The Traditional Western Bourgeois Genre, The Novel. After The Colonial Demise, The Genre Of The Novel Mirrors Approaches Of Communication More Oral-Oriented Than Those Linked To Western Written Aesthetic Values, And The Strategies Used By Selvon Are Surveyed To Show The Interrelationships Between Language, Power, Literature And Cultural Identities. The London Trilogy Is Analysed According To Linguistic, Literary And Cultural Paradigms, Shedding Lights On The Relevance Of Selvon S Work For The Construction Of A Culturally Independent Caribbean Literature.It Is Hoped That The Present Book Will Prove Immensely Useful To The Students And Researchers Of English Literature Concerned With The Works Of Sam Selvon. While The Teachers Of The Subject Will Consider It An Ideal Reference Book, The General Readers Will Find It Highly Interesting.
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 author of such works as A Brighter Sun (1952), The Lonely Londoners (1956), and The Plains of Caroni (1970), West Indian novelist Samuel Selvon is attracting growing amounts of scholarly attention. Nonetheless, criticism of his works has largely been imbalanced, with most scholarship focusing primarily on his language. This book corrects that imbalance by placing Selvon's novels within historical, sociological, and ideological contexts. A new interpretation of Selvon's achievement as a novelist, the volume looks, for the first time, at his works in terms of categories of novels--peasant, middle-class, and immigrant. The book demonstrates that each category is different from the others, and that novels within categories are similar. Thus it provides a coherent vision of Selvon's canon. It illustrates, as well, the development of Selvon's philosophy of West Indians as peasant, bourgeois, and immigrant. In doing so, it explores the significance of ethnicity in his works and discusses Selvon's imaginative apotheosis of the Indo-Trinidadian peasant and the diminution of the Afro-Trinidadian immigrant. The volume also studies Selvon's fictional and rhetorical techniques and argues that his works range from Bildungsroman to picaresque to epic to satire.
The book studies the relationship between ?Individual and Family? on the broader sense which is explored in the 19 Caribbean novels are divided into four decades(1950?s to 1980?s) which contributes valuably to the comprehension of the Caribbean phenomenon of ?identity?. In the Caribbean context (West Indian context), the struggle for ?identity? is in essence, a struggle for meaningful relatedness or the sameness with others as human beings, within a society compelled by history into racial and cultural hybridization on the one hand, and the social, economic and political stratification, on the other. The book focuses on psychological and sociological Caribbean context which is different from usual context of understanding. It studies 19 Caribbean novels of 12 writers - George Lamming, V S Naipaul, Samuel Selvon, Edgar Mittelholtzer, Roger Mais, Wilson Harris, Jean Rhys, Michael Anthony, Merle Hodge, John Hearne, Jamaicia Kincaid, and Merle Collins. The novels of these writers explore the uniqueness of the Caribbean society which is ?the microcosm? of the world.
When the SS Empire Windrush berthed at Tilbury docks in 1948 with 492 ex-servicemen from the Caribbean, it marked the beginning of the post-war migrations to Britain that would form part of modern, multi-cultural Britain. A significant role in this social transformation would be played by the literary and non-literary output of writers from the Caribbean. These writers in exile were responsible not just for the establishment of the West Indian novel, but, by virtue of their location in the Mother Country, were also the pioneers of black writing in Britain. Over the next fifty years, this writing would come to represent an important body of work intimately aligned to the evolving and contentious notions of 'home' as economic migration became a permanent presence. In this book, David Ellis provides in-depth analyses of six key figures whose writing charts the establishment of black Britain. For Sam Selvon, George Lamming, and E. R. Braithwaite, writing home represents a literature of reappraisal as the myths of empire -- the gold-paved streets of London -- conflict with the harsh realities of being designated an immigrant. The unresolved consequences of this reappraisal are made evident in the works of Andrew Salkey, Wilson Harris, and Linton Kwesi Johnson where radicalism in both political and literary terms can be read as a response to the rejection of the black communities by an increasingly divided Britain in the 1970s. Finally, the novels of Caryl Phillips, Joan Riley, and David Dabydeen mark an increasingly reflective literature as the notion of home shifts more explicitly from the Caribbean to Britain itself. Containing both contextual and biographical information throughout, "Writing Home" represents a literary and social history of the emergence of black Britain in the second half of the twentieth century.
The Arthurian legend closes with a promise: On a distant day, when his country calls, the king will return. His lost realm will be regained, and his shattered dream of an ideal world will, at last, be realized. This collection of original essays explores the issue of return in the modern Arthurian legend. With an Introduction by noted scholar Raymond H. Thompson and 13 essays by authors from the fields of literature, art history, film history, and folklore, this collection reveals the flexibility of the legend. Just as the modern legend takes the form current to its generation, the myth of return generates a new legend with each telling. As these authors show, return can come in the form of a noble king or a Caribbean immigrant, with the mystery of an art theft or a dying boy's dream.
The Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British Novel offers a new literary history of the Second World War and its aftermath by focusing on wartime visions of rebuilding Britain. Studying works by Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, Samuel Selvon, Alan Hollinghurst, Michael Ondaatje, and Kazuo Ishiguro, it shows how contemporary fiction reflected the transition from a warfare state to a welfare state, and preserved its transformative potential while redefiningits possible futures. With this long view of postwar fiction, this volume demonstrates the holding power of welfare's promises of repair and Britain's mid-century on the British cultural imagination.
The Novel Now is an intelligent and engaging survey ofcontemporary British fiction. Discusses familiar names such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan,Salman Rushdie, and Angela Carter and compares them with morerecent authors, including David Mitchell, Ali Smith, A.L. Kennedy,Matt Thorne, Nicola Barker, and Toby Litt Incorporates original coverage of subgenres such as chick lit,lad lit, gay fiction, crime fiction, and the historical novel Discusses the ways in which notions of regional identity andtribalist views have surfaced in UK and Irish fiction, and howpost-Imperial sensibility has become a feature of the‘British’ novel Situates contemporary fiction within its socio-cultural andliterary contexts.
