This article considers two novels by Andrew Salkey, Escape to an Autumn Pavement and The Adventures of Catullus Kelly. Where recent critical attention endeavours to emphasize the significance of the former novel as an account of black homosexuality, the intention here is to take these novels together to explore wider concerns of sex and sexuality during the 1960s. In so doing, these novels are located not just within the growing genre of West Indian writing with its emphasis upon the aesthetics of identity in this period, but also in its relation to literature associated with the 'Angry Young Men'. The intention is to read Salkey's work not just as expressions of migrant identity, but as illustrations of British identity during a moment of intense social change with regard to global status, sexual politics and incipient multiculturalism.
