Both devastating and funny, The Lonely Londoners is an unforgettable account of immigrant experience - and one of the great twentieth-century London novels. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Susheila Nasta.

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.

Sam Selvon (b. 1923) was born in San Fernando, Trinidad. In 1950 Selvon left Trinidad for the UK where after hard times of survival he established himself as a writer with A Brighter Sun (1952), An Island is a World (1955), The Lonely Londoners (1956), Ways of Sunlight (1957), Turn Again Tiger (1958), I Hear Thunder (1963), The Housing Lark (1965), The Plains of Caroni (1970), Moses Ascending (1975) and Moses Migrating (1983).

If you enjoyed The Lonely Londoners, you might like Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark or Shiva Naipaul's Fireflies, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'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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Jean Constantine d'Costa, storywriter, critic and teacher was born in January 1937 in Jamaica. She attended St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's High School's and later studied at the University of West Indies. Later, she would pursue further studies at Oxford and Indiana Universities of the West Indies and Hamilton College in the USA. As Professor of English at Hamilton College 1980-1989, she taught English 200, Creative Writing, The Tortured Sensibility, Old English, History of the English Language and Major Caribbean Writers.

D'Costa is also a well-established writer of children's books. Sprat Morrison, her first novel, captures the Jamaican atmosphere and speech rhythms with great precision and insight. Sprat Morrison has found a special place in Jamaican schools' curriculum and is used as prescribed text in literature in many high schools.

Her work in linguistics, especially on Jamaican Creole, is also well known. Language in Exile, a work she co-authored with Barbara Lalla, tries to recapture the Creole speech of early Jamaican society by analyzing rare, 18th and 19th century documents in their sociohistorical context.

D'Costa has also copy-edited a number of books for the University Press of the University of the West Indies, as well as a historical novel of filmaker' Perry Henzell's, The Harder They Come which was written by Michael Thelwell. For many years she continued to write fiction and poetry for adults, adolescents and children.

Jean D'Costa is now retired and lives in Weston, Florida.