Actually I take it back - over the last month or so I've read mostly books by black authors, not just a few. And The Lonely Londoners, much like Brixton Rock, deserves to be right up there.
In all honesty, I'm not quite sure why I had never even heard of Selvon, as this book is truly magnificent. Again, it's probably an easy sell for me as I love Brixton (or at least used to, when I was a pseudo-basketball player and I went there three times a week to train) and there is plenty of it, but to me the scenes with the greatest literary significance are the ones at Waterloo station, where the hopes and dreams of the recently landed clash with the acquired wisdom and shiftiness of the "old hands".
And, much like Brixton Rock, this book opened my eyes to an entirely different use of the English language and of writing dialogue.
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