Samuel Selvon

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Actress Pauline Henriques and Samuel Selvon on the radio show Caribbean Voices (1952)

Samuel Dickson Selvon (born May 20, 1923 in San Fernando , † April 14, 1994 in Port of Spain ) was a writer, essayist and journalist from Trinidad and Tobago , who worked in Great Britain and Canada . His most famous work is the novel The Lonely Londoners (1956), written in Creole English .

Life and work

Samuel Dickson Selvon was born in Trinidad in 1923 . His paternal grandfather came from Madras in southern India , his maternal grandfather from Scotland . He finished his school education at Naparima College in San Fernando in 1938. From 1940 to 1945 he did his military service in the Royal Naval Reserve, as a radio operator for the ships of the Royal Navy patrolling the Caribbean .

From 1946 he worked as a reporter and literary editor for the Trinidad Guardian . During this time he began to write short stories, which under the pseudonyms Michael Wentworth, Esses, Ack-Ack and Big Buffer, etc. a. published in the West Indian literary magazine Bim . In 1947 he married Draupadi Persuad.

In 1950 Selvon went to London , where he lived in an immigrant home, later in a basement apartment in Notting Hill and worked as an office clerk for the Indian embassy. During this time he began to write critically about immigrant life. His poems and short stories appeared among others. a. in London Magazine , New Statesman and The Nation . In 1952 his debut novel A Brighter Sun was published , followed by numerous other novels - including his most famous: The Lonely Londoners (1956). In 1963 he married Althea Nesta Daroux.

Selvon converted several of his prose works into radio plays, which were broadcast by the BBC in the Caribbean Voices program. He also wrote two TV screenplays for the BBC, Anansi the Spiderman (1974) and Home Sweet India (1976). He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Pressure (1976) with the director Horace Ové, who is also from Trinidad .

Since 1978 Selvon lived in the Canadian Prairie Province of Alberta , where he a. a. Moses Migrating (1983) published, but was hardly noticed by the critics. He taught creative writing at the University of Victoria and was writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary . He died in 1994 on a trip to Trinidad.

meaning

Selvon introduced Creole as a narrative and dialogue language in Anglophone literature and made it a means of representation of Caribbean identity. He thus had a significant influence on authors with a migration background in Great Britain.

Honors

His work has received two Guggenheim Fellowships as well as the Hummingbird Medal (1969) and the Chaconia Medal (1994). He received honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies and the University of Warwick . In 2012 Selvon was posthumously honored with the NALIS Lifetime Literary Award for his contributions to the literature of Trinidad and Tobago.

Works (selection)

Novels and short stories
  • A brighter sun. 1952.
  • An Island is a World. 1955.
  • The Lonely Londoners. 1956.
  • Ways of Sunlight. 1957.
  • Turn Again Tiger. 1959.
    • German: Turn back, Tiger: A novel from Trinidad. Translated from the English by Curt Meyer-Clason . Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1960.
  • I Hear Thunder. 1963.
  • The Housing Lark. 1965.
  • The Plains of Caroni. 1970.
  • Those Who Eat the Cascadura. 1972.
  • Moses Ascending. 1975.
  • Moses Migrating. 1983.
Radio plays
  • Eldorado West One. 1989.
  • Highway in the Sun and Other Plays. 1991.
Scripts
  • Anansi the Spiderman. 1974.
  • Home Sweet India. 1976.
  • with Horace Ové: Pressure. 1976.

Literature (selection)

  • Kathie Birat: Seeking Sam Selvon: Michel Fabre and the Fiction of the Caribbean. In: Transatlantica. 1/2009. (on-line)
  • Curdella Forbes: From Nation to Diaspora: Sam Selvon, George Lamming and the Cultural Performance of Gender. University of West Indies Press, Mona 2005, ISBN 976-640-171-3 .
  • Roydon Salick: The Novels of Samuel Selvon: A Critical Study. Greenwood Press, 2001, ISBN 0-313-31636-8 .
  • Mark S. Looker: Atlantic Passages: History, community, and language in the fiction of Sam Selvon. Peter Lang, New York 1996, ISBN 0-8204-2836-1 .
  • Austin Clarke: Passage Back Home: a personal reminiscence of Samuel Selvon. Exile Editions, Toronto 1994, ISBN 1-55096-060-1 .
  • Margaret Paul Joseph: Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction. Greenwood Press, 1992, ISBN 0-313-28107-6 .
  • Clement H. Wyke: Sam Selvon's Dialectical Style and Fictional Strategy. University of British Columbia, Vancouver 1991, ISBN 0-7748-0364-9 .
  • Susheila Nasta (Ed.): Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon. Three Continents Press, Washington 1988, ISBN 0-89410-238-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sam Selvon at: peepaltreepress.com , accessed on August 8, 2015 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d Louis James, Obituary: Sam Selvon at: www.independent.co.uk , accessed on August 8, 2015 (English).
  3. ↑ The Caribbean Hall of Fame, Samuel Selvon at: caribbean.halloffame.tripod.com , accessed August 8, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b Samuel Selvon: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at: norman.hrc.utexas.edu , accessed on August 8, 2015 (English).
  5. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica, Samuel Selvon at: britannica.com , accessed on August 8, 2015.
  6. ↑ a b Samuel Selvon at: bestoftrinidad.com , accessed on August 8, 2015 (English).
  7. ↑ a b c NALIS.gov.tt: Sam Selvon. Retrieved August 19, 2020 .
  8. ^ Alison Donnell (Ed.): Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge, London 2002, ISBN 0-415-16989-5 . (English)
personal data
SURNAME Selvon, Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Selvon, Samuel Dickson; Selvon, Sam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH San Fernando
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1994
Place of death Port of Spain