Sam Selvon

The eponymous hero of Sam Selvon's Moses Ascending (1975), an east Indian from Trinidad, buys a tenement house in Shepherd's Bush, West London. He also acquires Bob, a white Man Friday 'from somewhere in the Midlands, a willing worker, eager to learn the ways of the Black Man'. Moses tries unsuccessfully to convert Bob from the evils of alcohol. 'I decided to teach him the Bible when I could make the time.' The account of Moses's trials with Bob typifies Selvon's writings, witty, pointed and good-humoured, giving a Caribbean twist to a familiar theme.