To understand the new London, I lived it. I slept rough with Roma beggars and touted for work with Baltic laborers on the kerb.

The derail was placed deliberately so that the train would fall into the river.

it was in the garage that Alec worked, […] doing mysterious greasy things. Grease blackened his hairy legs; grease had turned his white canvas shoes black; grease blackened his hands even beyond the wrist; grease made his short working trousers black and stiff. Yet he had the gift, which Mr Biswas admired, of being able to hold a cigarette between greasy fingers and greasy lips without staining it.

the contraction of malaria