London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City - Hardcover

Sandhu, Sukhdev

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000257182X ISBN 13: 9780002571821

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2003

Synopsis

From the 11th century, when one commentator claimed the capital was being over-run with Moors, to the garage MCs and street poets of 2003 – this book tells the story of life in London for black and Asian people from the seventeenth century until today.

One of the scores of Africans who boarded the S.S. Nautilus in April 1787 hoping to leave London behind and start a new life in Sierra Leone was called Black London. Who was he? Undoubtedly poor and desperate, he left almost no archival mark or trace. Nor do most people – white or black.

London Calling tells the story and examines literature written by black people in or about London, tracing their escapades, fortune making, and self-expansion. It is a joyful and often rapturous work, a love letter to the capital, a teeming and complex mix of social and cultural history seen through the imagination and experience of great black writers. London Calling gets to the heart of the immigration impulse, and evokes the dreams and adventures of those who have sought refuge and asylum in the cradle of Empire.

The book is populated by runaway slaves, lotharios, imams, boxer-pimps, rajahs and colonial revolutionaries, and discusses writers as diverse in style and time as the 18th-century grocer-aesthete Ignatius Sancho right through to Rushdie, Kureishi and yardie chronicler Victor Headley. The result is an exciting work, brimming with life, as it spotlights a rich but neglected literary tradition, and brings to life a gaping void in the city's history. Placing the multiculturalism of today's capital in its historical context, Sukhdev Sandhu shows that it is no new phenomenon, and that just as London has been the making of many black writers, they too have been the making of London.

This is a brilliant and stunningly original debut from a writer set to be one of our most important cultural commentators.

About this title

Review:

‘A spectacular, stimulating work, full of intriguing information.’ Sunday Times

‘This cocktail of literary archaeology, social critique and storytelling reopens a window on a marginalised world.’ Observer

‘A fine, unusually insightful and stylishly written piece of work, a valuable, zesty contribution to the growing body of literature on black writers by black writers.’ Daily Telegraph

Synopsis:

Black authors of the 18th century were powerful figures: out walking near Charing Cross with one of his artist friends, Ignatius Sancho was accosted by a young fop who cried out to his friend, "Smoke Othello". Sancho placed himself across the path and exclaimed in booming tones, "Aye, Sir, such Othellos you meet with but once in a century. Such Iagos as you, we meet with in every dirty passage. Proceed, Sir!" This book covers the history of black English writing and tells the story of the black and Asian people who have told the story of black and Asian London over the last 30 years of the 20th century. Crammed with stories, anecdotes, biographies and literary references, this work is populated by lotharios, future statesmen, terrorists, Imams, lascars, ex-slaves and colonial revolutionaries.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 000257182X
• ISBN 13: 9780002571821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512