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22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Answering the call, 26 Aug 2003
Tolerant, playful, learned, London Calling vividly repopulates London with the voices of black and Asian writers who have lived there over the last three hundred years. Sandhu delights in the sheer variety of ways in which these writers have imagined the city, in all its gloss and squalor. From the 18th century, where Ignatius Sancho runs a grocers shop, and sends out a stream of lively gossipy letters to his many cultured friends such as the author Laurence Sterne; to the twentieth, where Samuel Selvon pens novels which use modernist techniques to capture and build on the vibrant speech rhythms and shifting life experiences of Caribbean migrants, Sandhu prizes those writers who have immersed themselves in the messiness and chaos of the metropolis. He prefers writers like Hanif Kureishi or Salman Rushdie, whose characters exploit city life to break down barriers and fashion themselves anew, provide sardonic comment on London through their wild antics, and challenge a narrowly linear form of writing. V.S. Naipaul, despite acknowledged literary triumphs in other works, is seen to 'step back prudishly' from London, and to criticise the city like a dreary 'pub bore'.
For Sandhu, black writing has been too often seen by its critics and even its supporters as 'emergency literature',in which the only value is journalistic reportage, or political agitation. He shows how black writers display a much wider range, indulging their imaginations, creating lasting literary achievements, mixing pleasure with a sense of the hardships which they faced. His writing is itself both colloquial and intense, rich in a diction rendering the heaped-up mixture and the snappiness he loves so much in those he studies.Sandhu does not entirely convince in one assertion, that 'London has been good for those coming from the old Empire'. Too many slave traders, antagonistic London mobs, racist landlords, crumbling rooms and vicious slurs lurk in the texts he examines to allow him to claim this. However, in bringing to prominence the long history of black and Asian inhabitants of London, Sandhu's service is not only literary. Without hectoring,he shows the good, bad and ugly sides of life as they experience it down the years; and the good, bad and colourful characters among them, from dedicated fighters against slavery, through criminal enforcers, to real and fictional chancers and tricksters whose scams and hopes for a better future are morally ambivalent. In all, the book is a stunning debut, one in which Sandhu demonstrates both the verbal energy and the generosity of moral vision which he charts in his favourite authors.
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13 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A major disappointment, 12 Jan 2004
By A Customer
Considering the topic and the quality of the material at his disposal, this is a really disappointing book. This is mainly because Sandhu doesn't quite know what book he should be writing -- lit. crit. or history? -- so we get a bit of both but not much of either. Despite the book's hefty size it's very lightweight. It's meant to be about 'black and Asian writers', yet the early chapters are more like historical anecdotes and tell us how black people were written about in the 18th and 19th centuries but not really how they wrote (about) themselves. Little information is new. And when he does get down to some literary analysis it's pretty uninspiring: his take on Ignatious Sancho makes loads from, er, the dashes in Sancho's prose style. The 20th-century chapters are a bit more exciting, partly because the literature about which he's writing is more dynamic, but even here there are loads of missed opportunities: his peculiar reading of Caryl Phillips is symptomatic. Basically, 'London Calling' is not in-depth enough to be history and not sharp enough to be good lit. crit. so it ends up falling between two stools. Its unimaginative title is typical of the rather derivative feel of the book. And, oddly, Sandhu claims that the writers he explores aren't well-known; but this just isn't true. Equiano, Sancho etc. are well-worn subjects, as are Selvon, Kureishi and Rushdie. There's little here that isn't in Peter Fryer's magisterial history of black Britain, 'Staying Power', or C. L. Innes's recent excellent book on black writing in Britain since the 18th century. I was really disappointed by this book and -- amazingly, considering the subject-matter -- often bored. A pity.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Who are these Philistines!, 8 Jan 2006
First off I cannot understand the people who scored this with a 1. I am utterly perplexed. Sandhu as we all know is a one off from his Times column and Oxford lectures and the Times is right with is being RICH is his style and his sources and his passion for writing. If anything I was historically transported and living through the eyes of a black and Asian minority on the streets of London thoughout "The Empire" Rich in personality and history and endless facts I didn`t know about social history. Which was what the book set out to do. I can only wonder at what some people were thinking when they ordered this book judging from some reviews. It is full of the ordels blacks and Asians had to deal with in aland also distant to us. The past.It is also full of the opportunities.I`m not even going to overintectualise about it and deconstruct it or get into Adorno and false conciousness of democracies It was absolutely fabulous in style content alone and the characters you meet. I`m a middle class white English man who likes his Bach ( and Ravi Shankar it`s true and Rusdies novels.Black culture to me is Hendrix and Ghana village choirs and Nina Simone. I hadn`t even thought about it too much before. and certainly not from a historical perspective. I now know more what Beau Brummell or how blacks and Asians were viewed and how their expectations and all has evolved and chaged and us with it to today. All detail here and of the mother land as it went through it`s own transitions in taste and art and politics and revolutions and the reality of living in it for all of us. Alot of facts about the economics and prospects. I never would have thought for instance it was good to join the navy for balcks and Asians than staying in service they could make alot more money. Just as an example. The pages hold with entertainment and truth and is informative of other peoples dreams and hopes and irony and just good writing. It is such a joy to see good writing.There are so many dull postmodern dumbed down watered down books about these days even in the biographies section. This book is great.I am still in shock with the 1. scores. I left this book feeling definately edcuated and priviliged with an insight into a world I am hardly aware of. Unlike the negative reviewer I had not hard of many of the famous black writers and characters in the book. it is just not in my field of study. Harvus Peglerus plaudit! Actually. This book is genius. Noone else can write like this!! It`s 5 stars on style content alone. And thrill factor. It was insightful and passionate as the Times said, informative and exciting with irony, class and punch. Though literary style is too much for some people. If style is a cutting tool of clarity and only the stylish remain obscure and nothing can transcend character then this book wins hands down. Definite 5 stars. Anyone seeing it as anything less has woefully misunderstood the work or what they were buying or where they coming from. I am very glad I bought this book. And even more glad I stopped buy to fill in a review on Amazon. The result after reading it is I now at last havea foothold on some great Asians and blacks of history in and around London. Names new to me but characters expounded with wit and real love. It is a weclome addition for us Whitely Middle class dudes who are not following black and Asian culture with a depth. I might DO in future. I loved the way the book was a real tour de froce through history with the charactoers outlined and the skirmishing wit and irony or the writer. Erudite and enjoyable. If this book was to achieve a mix or a personal and well researched insight into the history of blacks and Asians in London and what a subject really then it suceeded very well. The writer was not out to fill in areas for those already in the know and acquainted to some people with pre-established awareness . Not in all cases.Look like their alreayd have their own opinions. But objectively I would say a very welcome addition to the genre. But don`t ask me what so much as I`m new here to this field. It may be the beginning of further reading for me with the people it talks about.It was certainly a great insight into the Philosophy, zeitgheist and history of the times of great characters of black and Asian origin, veritable heroes really who rose through all to be themselves in the hub of the world. Excellent.
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