Description
A first edition, first printing of City of Spades by Colin Macinnes, published by Macgibbon and Kee, London in 1957. A near fine copy free from inscriptions, tarnished gilt titling to spine, small bump to top edge of front board, toning to text block, ghosting to front and rear free end papers. In a very good price clipped wrapper, open tears to spine tips, fading to spine, chipping to knuckles of front and rear flap folds, tears and creasing to upper and lower edge of front panel, similarly to rear panel, chipping to upper edge of rear flap fold. Wrapper design by Alexander Weatherson.
City of Spades (1957) is the first in Colin MacInnes’s London Trilogy, followed by Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr Love and Justice (1960). City of Spades is a vivid novel about post war London’s immigrant life, focusing on African arrivals and their interactions with the city’s shifting social fabric. Told partly through the eyes of Johnny Fortune, a young Nigerian, and Montgomery Pew, a civil servant, it captures the excitement, misunderstandings and tensions of cross-cultural encounters. MacInnes portrays racism, poverty and resilience with honesty and energy, making the novel a groundbreaking exploration of multicultural Britain in the 1950s.
