A brighter sun: a novel

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A brighter sun: a novel

The jacket front illustration shows a scene outdoors with a man and woman talking on a path, a young woman and man walking toward the viewer, and the back of a child. A house, trees and hills are in the background. The jacket back has a photograph of the author, Samuel Selvon.

About this item

Title:: A brighter sun: a novel

Identifier:: PR9272.9S4B741952

Permalink:: https://n2t.net/ark:/81984/d32z83

Type:: Image

Notes:: Michael Ayrton was the jacket designer. The hero of A Brighter Sun is the newly married son of an agricultural laborer who leaves his family in the sugar cane belt to settle in a suburban village much closer to the city. He moves from a closed Indian community to a multiracial one, and these changes in personal status and environment push an innocent and ignorant young Tiger to a new understanding of his environment and of his responsibilities as a citizen. Tiger and his young wife, Urmilla, discover a new sense of community within the framework of Trinidad's larger multicultural society. Movement away from the isolated racial exposure of their childhood in the sugar belt is a positive step for Tiger and Urmilla in this novel, though the condescension Tiger acquires to an agricultural way of life is to be the cause of much grief and turmoil in the sequel to this novel, Turn Again Tiger (1958). Selvon's novels illustrate the panoply of different "cities" that are lived in London, as with any major city, due to class and racial boundaries. In many ways, his books are the precursors to works such as Some Kind of Black by Diran Adebayo, White Teeth by Zadie Smith and The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi.