The Lonely Londoners

The book details the life of West Indians in post-World War II London, a city the immigrants consider the "centre of the world." Covering a period of roughly three years, The Lonely Londoners has no plot in the usual sense of the term. The novel follows a limited number of characters of the "Windrush generation", all of them "coloureds", through their daily lives in the capital. The various threads of action form a whole through the unifying central character of Trinidadian Moses Aloetta, a veteran émigré who, after more than ten years in London, has still not achieved anything of note and whose homesickness increases as he gets older. Every Sunday morning, "the boys", many of them recent arrivals, come together in his rented room to trade stories and inquire after those whom they have not seen for a while. Their lives mainly consist of work (or looking for work) and various petty pleasures.