Moses Ascending - Sam Selvon

Much like with The Lonely Londoners, I very much loved this novel, its vignettes and Selvon's propensity for the vernacular. 

It doesn't have the same significance of its predecessor, but it's arguably funnier. That said, it is really nice to see Moses's life come full circle, and the two books allowed me to understand why one of the characters in the book I talk about above is named like that.

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon

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.