London Calling

Om boken

From the 11th-century to today, this book tells the story of life in London for black and Asian people. It traces the literary history of the capital through the escapades, fortune making, and self-expansion of these often-forgotten writers. It is a joyful work, a love letter to London, a teeming and complex mix of social and cultural history seen through the imagination and experience of great black and Asian writers. The book gets to the heart of the immigration impulse, evoking the dreams and adventures of those who have sought refuge and asylum in the cradle of Empire. It 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 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, the work 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.