He arrived early, in 1950, with most of A Brighter Sun in his baggage, on the same ship as George Lamming, who later was largely responsible for establishing Selvon's especial identity as the "folk poet" of the group.
In raising Selvon to the heights of praise, as "the greatest and therefore the most important folk poet the British Caribbean has yet produced" (The Pleasures of Exile, .
1960), Lamming allied himself, a Negro, with Selvon, an Indian, in emblematic partnership. He contradistinguished them both, as grounded in "the peasant sensibility".
from V. S. Naipaul, who "with the diabolical help of Oxford University, has done a thorough job of wiping this out of his guts." Selvon was not himself hostile to Naipaul, who started publishing later than he and far outstripped him in fame. Since Lamming's .
neat opposition can still be invoked, although it is no longer widely accepted, it is worth remembering here that in 1990 Selvon presented Naipaul as a candidate for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, sponsored by World Literature Today. He stated then, "Like all truly great writers of the past, (Naipaul's) fearlessness, his far-reaching vision, .
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and his outspoken views have raised eyebrows and tempers and even threats to his life"(Magill).
Selvon's career places him in the two worlds of colonial and post-colonial experience. His work extends from the period of waning colonial control by Britain, through the dislocating experience of exile (The Lonely Londoners) and the disappointing search for synthesis and completeness in Moses Ascending, to the hopeful resumption of the search in Moses Migrating, which combines the ironies and contrasts of failed experience and fantasy(Benson, 1434-35) .
Sam Selvon is one of the important writers who contributed to the remarkable development of West Indian fiction in the 1950s and 1960s. Within recent years his work has been critically examined by scholars from several countries.