Saturday, November 11, 2017

Ten of the best non-fiction books about London

At the Guardian, Kathryn Hughes tagged the ten best non-fiction books about London. One title on the list:
[2016]’s This Is London: Life and Death in the World City by Ben Judah is an epic account of London as a place where global migrants come to scratch a subsistence living or, occasionally, spend a shady fortune. We are far, far beyond the Windrush generation here. Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians pour out their stories – often terrifying, mostly sad, occasionally funny – while Judah writes it all down in compulsive, shocking detail. We’re back in Mayhew’s London, but now watercress sellers and mudlarks have been replaced by sleepy Africans catching the early morning night bus to their office cleaning jobs four zones over on the other side of town.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue