Moses Ascending

Sam Selvon's Moses Ascending is not what one expects from a sequel of sorts to Lonely Londoners. Like Pressure, a film Selvon co-wrote, the novel addresses Black Power and race and gender in a 1970s London setting. Unlike the film, however, this novel, save Brenda, a young woman born in London and devoted to the Party, Selvon's novel does not try to understand the appeal of Black Power to Black Britons born in the Mother Country. To his credit, Selvon's carnivalesque commentary on race and gender includes Indian and Pakistani immigrants (including trafficking in illegal immigrants) along with some Selvonian wit for great laughs, but it was much more difficult to relate to the characters here, not to mention Moses's unsuccessful attempts at finding some peace, whether as a writer, friend, or lover, or community. 

Interestingly, the rather temporal nature of the setting (Moses's building is slated to be demolished at some point in the future) may foreshadow Moses's return to Trinidad in the final part of the trilogy. Indeed, at multiple occasions throughout the novel, Moses longs for sweet memories of Trinidad, for the trees of his home, and will have to make some changes at some point once the Shepherd's Bush home is destroyed and he can no longer profit as a landlord (in this world, a black man in London cannot live like a 'lord' for too long). The black nationalism, subverted Caliban-Friday relationship with Bob (also a 'migrant'), and challenging times of white racism, growing xenophobia, as well as some of the rather problematic assumptions and biases of Selvon regarding black nationalism or the role of literature in social struggle provide interesting themes, but not in the engaging or direct sense of Moses's first adventure.