ABSTRACT
Sam Selvon’s fiction, published between 1950 and the mid-1980s when he
left Britain to live in Canada, was a milestone in the history and develop-
ment of Caribbean and black British literature. Frequently described as
the father of ‘black writing’ in Britain, a ‘natural philosopher’ and
‘alchemist of language’, Selvon was one of a group of now-distinguished
writers who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean during the 1950s.
