Brick Lane

monica ali

After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbour Mrs Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how must she comfort the naive and disillusioned Chanu?
As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.
Monica Ali's splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvelous and the terrifying spiral together.

Genres fictionindiabook clubcontemporaryliterary fictionbangladeshbritish literaturenovelsliteratureasia

432 pages, Paperback

First published May 31,2003

Literary awards

booker prize, orange prize, guardian first book award, orwell prize, audie award, national book critics circle award, kiriyama prize,

Places

london england, bangladesh,

This edition

Format: 432 pages, Paperback
Published: June 2, 2004 by Scribner
ISBN: 9780743243315
ASIN: 0743243315
Language: English

About the author

monica ali

Monica Ali is a British writer of Bangladeshi origin. She is the author of Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Ali was voted Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.

She lives in South London with her husband, Simon Torrance, a management consultant. They have two children, Felix (born 1999) and Shumi (born 2001).

She opposes the British government's attempt to introduce the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. She discusses this in her contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays published by Penguin in 2005.