First published 2025
Victor "Lucky" Johnson steps off the boat from St Kitts into early 1960s London, carrying dreams of working as a journalist. The city greets him with different realities. He takes a job at an Irish pub in Notting Hill, then finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a slum landlord who operates without scruples. Lucky navigates the gap between his Caribbean past and his British present, wrestling with what it means to belong nowhere completely. The story follows him from those first difficult years through decades of life in London, tracking how exile reshapes a person over time. Phillips traces the particular challenges faced by the Windrush generation, caught between two worlds and fully accepted by neither. Lucky emerges as a man marked by flaws but driven by an unbreakable will to survive and adapt, embodying both the losses and the enduring strength that define the immigrant experience in London.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, british-literature, 21st-century, african-american-historical-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: London, Notting Hill, St Kitts
Period: 1960s
240 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC