Letter: Obscure to some, admired by others

RACHEL BORRILL stressed the apparent arbitrariness and artificiality of the inclusion of writers such as A S J Tessimond, Patricia Pogson and Samuel Selvon in the recently compiled literature anthology for the nation's 14-year-olds. One is led to conclude that Sam Selvon's writing is useful only because it fulfils the School Examinations and Assessment Council's multicultural needs and is otherwise 'relatively obscure'. Selvon is one of the Caribbean's most distinguished writers, a contemporary of V S Naipaul, Wilson Harris, and Derek Walcott. Had Derek Walcott not recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, would he too (as the only other Caribbean writer in this anthology) have been described as one of those that 'nobody knows'?

Susheila Nasta

London SE10