The Lonely Londoners
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The Lonely Londoners
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Narrated by:
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Carl Mason
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels.
At Waterloo Station, hopeful new arrivals from the West Indies step off the boat train, ready to start afresh in 1950s London. There, homesick Moses Aloetta, who has already lived in the city for years, meets Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver and shows him the ropes. In this strange, cold and foggy city where the natives can be less than friendly at the sight of a black face, has Galahad met his Waterloo? But the irrepressible newcomer cannot be cast down. He and all the other lonely new Londoners - from shiftless Cap to Tolroy, whose family has descended on him from Jamaica - must try to create a new life for themselves. As pessimistic 'old veteran' Moses watches their attempts, they gradually learn to survive and come to love the heady excitements of London.
'His Lonely Londoners has acquired a classics status since it appeared in 1956 as the definitive novel about London's West Indians'
Financial Times
'The unforgettable picaresque ... a vernacular comedy of pathos'
Guardian
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Through Moses, Selvon gives us a first-hand glimpse of the Windrush generation’s experiences in London. It’s a portrait of struggle, sadness, prejudice, and hardship – yet told with such beauty and lyricism that it feels calming, almost comforting, even in the midst of difficulty.
The humour is extraordinary. I laughed out loud many times, even while being moved by the suffering behind the laughter. The characters Moses encounters are unforgettable – sharply observed, funny, flawed, and utterly real. You sense that Selvon knew these people in some form, but through Moses’ ballad they become larger than life, like voices in a chorus.
This balance – laughter with sorrow, grit with lyricism, the everyday with the timeless – makes The Lonely Londoners a book I’d recommend to anyone. It’s more than a novel: it’s a ballad of voices, a ballad of survival, and a ballad of London itself.
A ‘Ballard’ in the truest sense.
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Timeless novel read beautifully 5*
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