The Housing Lark

The Housing Lark - Paperback

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$16.00
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The Housing Lark
  • The Housing Lark
The Housing Lark - Paperback

The Housing Lark - Paperback

by Sam Selvon
$16.00
$16.00

Book Overview

The humorous yet poignant novel of West Indian migrant life in London that adds an iconic voice to the growing Caribbean canon

A Penguin Classic

Set in London in the 1960's, when the UK encouraged its Commonwealth citizens to emigrate as a result of the post-war labor shortage, The Housing Lark explores the Caribbean migrant experience in the "Mother Country" by following a group of friends as they attempt to buy a home together. Despite encountering a racist and predatory rental market, the friends scheme, often comically, to find a literal and figurative place of their own. Will these motley folks, male and female, Black and Indian, from Trinidad and Jamaica, dreamers, hustlers, and artists, be able to achieve this milestone of upward mobility? Unique and wonderful, comic and serious, cynical and tenderhearted, The Housing Lark poses the question of whether their "lark," or quixotic idea of finding a home, can ever become a reality. Kittitian-British novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips contributes a foreword, while postcolonial literature scholar Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction.
ISBN9780143133964
Author Sam Selvon
PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJanuary 2020
LanguageENG- English
Pages160
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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Classics Fiction

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More by Sam Selvon

The Housing Lark

The Housing Lark - Paperback

The Housing Lark - Paperback

By Sam Selvon

About Sam Selvon

Samuel Selvon (1923-1994) was a Trinidad-born writer who moved to London, England in the 1950s. His 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners is groundbreaking in its use of creolised English, or "nation language", for narrative as well as dialogue. Selvon was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships (in 1955 and 1968), an honorary doctorate from Warwick University in 1989, and in 1985 the honorary degree of DLitt by the University of the West Indies. In 1969 he was awarded the Trinidad & Tobago Hummingbird Medal Gold for Literature, and in 1994 he was (posthumously) given another national award, the Chaconia Medal Gold for Literature. In 2012 he was honoured with a NALIS Lifetime Achievement Literary Award for his contributions to Trinidad and Tobago's literature. Roy Williams, OBE, worked as an actor before turning to writing full-time in 1990. He graduated from Rose Bruford in 1995 with a first class BA Hons degree in Writing. The No Boys Cricket Club (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 1996) won him nominations for the TAPS Writer of the Year Award 1996 and for New Writer of the Year Award 1996 by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. He was the first recipient of the Alfred Fagon Award 1997 for Starstruck (Tricycle Theatre, London, 1998), which also won the 31st John Whiting Award and the EMMA Award 1999. Lift Off (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1999) was the joint winner of the George Devine Award 2000. His other theatre credits include Clubland (Royal Court, 2001), for which Roy won the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for the Most Promising Playwright; Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads (National Theatre, 2002, 2004); Sucker Punch (Royal Court, 2010). He was awarded the OBE for Services to Drama in the 2008 Birthday Honours List.

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