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Sam Selvon


(Samuel Selvon)
Trinidad (1923 - 1994)

Samuel Dickson Selvon aka Sam Selvon was born in San Fernando in the south of Trinidad. His parents were East Indian: his father was a first-generation Christian immigrant from Madras and his mother's father was Scottish.He was educated there at Naparima College, San Fernando, before leaving at the age of fifteen to work. He was a wireless operator with the Royal Naval Reserve from 1940 to 1945. Thereafter, he moved north to Port of Spain, and from 1945 to 1950, worked for the Trinidad Guardian as a reporter and for a time on its literary page. In this period, he began writing stories and descriptive pieces, mostly under a variety of pseudonyms such as Michael Wentworth, Esses, Ack-Ack, and Big Buffer. Selvon moved to London, England, in the 1950s, and then in the late 1970s to Alberta, Canada, where he lived until his death from a heart attack on 16 April 1994 on a return trip to Trinidad.

Selvon married twice: in 1947 to Draupadi Persaud, with whom he had one daughter, and in 1963 to Althea Daroux, with whom he had two sons and one daughter.
 

Genres: Literary Fiction
 
Series
Moses trilogy
   1. The Lonely Londoners (1956)
   2. Moses Ascending (1975)
   3. Moses Migrating (1983)
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Novels
   A Brighter Sun (1952)
   An Island Is a World (1955)
   Ways of Sunlight (1957)
   Turn again Tiger (1958)
   I Hear Thunder (1963)
   The Housing Lark (1965)
   The Plains of Caroni (1970)
   Those Who Eat the Cascadura (1972)
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Collections
   Eldorado West One (1988)
   Calypso in London (2023)
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Novellas and Short Stories
   A Drink of Water (1968)
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Plays show
 
Non fiction show
 


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