London Calling - Sukhdev Sandhu

London Calling
Sukhdev Sandhu
Publisher: HarperCollins
£20

If you need a guide to the contribution African, African-Caribbean and Asian writers have made to the history of literature in London then this is the book for you. Although heavy going in sections, it takes you on a literary journey from the 18th Century through to the present day. Ignatius Sancho, Samuel Selvon, Hanif Kureshi, Phyllis Wheatley and many, many more can all be found here. The ultimate reading list...

'While there's plenty said about the growing presence of brown Britain on these shores, what has brown Britain said of its adopted homeland? Sukhdev Sandhu's 389-page trawl through four centuries of storytelling about the capital city, through the eyes of black and Asian writers, is a clarion call for an over-looked literary tradition. ...Sandhu's belated contribution focuses on the relationship between black writers and London, the capital of Empire, and then, as now, a magnet for the curiosities of its multiracial subjects around the globe.

Sandhu's ambitious survey does show that there has always been a rich seam of talent that publishers have failed to mine. But his central thesis - that this metaphysical conception of London as freedom unites Sancho's story with those of Rushdie and Kureishi - is questionable.

There remains a presumption of representation that surrounds writing by brown Britons. Monica Ali, for example, has been gently criticised for writing about Bengali culture without knowing the language. The symbols of twenty-first century multicultural Britain promoted by the publishers happen to be attractive, mixed-race, young women.... Sandhu shows that whatever the hue of their complexion, successful writers are automatically part of an elite. Their stories are the perspectives of people rather than 'cultures'. This cocktail of literary archaeology, social critique and storytelling reopens a window on a marginalised world.'
The Observer