Join us for this thrilling talk by Roy Merchant presenting his latest work, “Distorted Lens” about the experience of black people in Britain
It is 2017 in a quiet upmarket suburb in West Essex. A son waits for his father to arrive for their usual monthly coffee and chocolate morning together. To kill time, he takes his mind back to growing up in West Essex and the stories he’d heard as a child and begins to wonder what impact they had on his life.
Distorted Lens takes us back to 1959 when two people meet and fall in love after being refused a room in Hackney, London. One is Irish, the other is from the Caribbean.
The book looks at the start of multiculturalism in London. Two mothers have to choose between the family that reared them and the new family and children they are creating in the changing metropolis that is London. Distorted Lens tells their story and then delves deeper into the choices they make.
It is a story of love, courage, weakness, strength, loyalty and disloyalty seen through the eyes of a father and his son.
The characters have no names, just their relationship with each other. In this way the author represents an everyman’s view of the people affected.