The Lonely Londoners
First US edition
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| Author | Samuel Selvon |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Publisher |
Longmans (UK) St Martin's Press (US) |
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Publication date
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1956 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 142 pp |
| OCLC | 65467567 |
The Lonely Londoners is a 1956 novel by Tamil Trinidadian author Samuel Selvon. Its publication marked the first literary work focusing on poor, working-class blacks in the beat writer tradition following the enactment of the British Nationality Act 1948.
The book details the life of West Indians in post-World War II London, a city the immigrants consider the "centre of the world." Covering a period of roughly three years, it has no plot in the usual sense of the term. Rather, the novel follows a limited number of characters of the "Windrush generation", all of them "coloureds", through their daily lives in the capital. The various threads of action form a whole through the unifying central character of Trinidadian Moses Aloetta, a veteran emigré who, after more than ten years in London, has still not achieved anything of note and whose homesickness increases as he gets older. Every Sunday morning "the boys", many a recent arrival among them, come together in his rented room to trade stories and inquire after those whom they have not seen for a while. Not surprisingly, their lives mainly consist of work (or looking for a job) and various petty pleasures. Dating young white women is at the top of the list, as is hanging around prostitutes (street prostitution was legal in London until 1959).
A recurring theme in Selvon's character development addresses upward social mobility. This mobility, however, is clouded by the character's designation as the "other". Selvon's characters are offered the worst jobs, they are exploited by housing landlords, and romance for these character oftentimes only includes sex. Their accents and skin colour mark them as outsiders and force them to form a group identity based on the principle of congregation via segregation. This analysis allows the reader to better understand the self-hate, disappointment, and struggle that haunts Selvon's characters. The protagonist, Moses, describes London as a lonely city that "divide[s] up in little worlds, and you stay in the world where you belong to and you don't know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers." Against a backdrop of invisibility, many of the characters struggle with a sense of failed promise. By looking at the various coping mechanisms: sex, lavish spending, drinking, hard work, appeasing white women, etc., the author ultimately conveys the unity in their experience. Regardless of their actions, a certain sense of stagnancy prevails. Moses says: "...I just lay there on the bed thinking about my life, how after all these years I ain't get no place at all, I still the same way, neither forward nor backward."
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