Sam Selvon

Born Samuel Dickson Selvon on May 20, 1923, in San Fernando, Trinidad, the sixth of seven children of a Christian Tamil merchant from Madras and an Anglo-Indian mother whose own father was Scottish, he grew up amid the canefields and oilfields of the island's south and left Naparima College at fifteen to work. From 1940 to 1945 he served as a wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve, then joined the Trinidad Guardian, filing stories and sketches under pseudonyms including Michael Wentworth and Big Buffer while running its literary page. In 1950 he sailed for London with fellow writer George Lamming, arriving with fifteen pounds and no prospects beyond a hope of newspaper work; he found instead factory floors and a clerkship at the Indian Embassy while writing at night. A Brighter Sun (1952), his first novel, was the first time an East Indian author had written with such quiet authority about the East Indian and Creole life of rural Trinidad, but it was The Lonely Londoners (1956) that made his name, its narration abandoning standard English altogether for the Trinidadian creole voice of its migrant characters, a breakthrough he said let the novel simply shoot along once he found it. Ways of Sunlight (1957) collected his short fiction, and Moses Ascending (1975) and Moses Migrating (1983) returned to his best known character. He co-wrote the screenplay for Pressure (1978), the first feature film by a Black British director, held two Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1978 moved his family to Calgary, Canada, teaching creative writing and, when money ran short, working a spell as a university janitor. Honorary doctorates from the University of Warwick and the University of the West Indies followed. Returning to Trinidad in December 1993 in failing health, he suffered a fatal heart attack on April 16, 1994, while travelling to the airport to fly home to Calgary, dying in hospital at seventy.

Writing The Lonely Londoners, Selvon kept the narration in English and let only his characters speak dialect, and the book would not move. On impulse he tried rewriting a passage in the Trinidadian voice throughout, narration included, and by his own account the novel simply shot along from there.