They would marry and he would take her back to England with him.' The story of her sister who remains in Bangladesh is delivered as an additional narrative through her letters. She is sent to England at the age of 18, with little knowledge of English, to live with her new, and to her, unappealing husband, Chanu: 'The man she would marry was old. After a short preamble, the majority of the novel is concerned with the events after her arranged marriage.

It begins with the troubled birth of the central character, Nazneen, in 1967 in what was then known as East Pakistan. Since this early popular and critical success, Ali has shown an admirable willingness to wrong-foot and surprise her readers, with novels that have often ranged far beyond the limiting canvas of the ‘British multicultural novel’ template that she helped to establish.īrick Lane is set in the eponymous area of East London and switches occasionally to Bangladesh. Granta reiterated this faith in her skill as a novelist, when it based its decision to name her as one of its 'Best of Young British Novelists' in 2003 on just the manuscript. Even before Ali had completed her famous debut she was signed her up, after her publisher had seen only five chapters of her first draft.

The story of her overnight success is well-known. But her forays into diverse settings beyond her original terrain have continued to reach a wide audience. Her subsequent books have been more varied in their critical success, and the excitement that surrounded her has become more subdued.

From her first appearance, Monica Ali has been hailed by critics as that rare thing, “a writer who seemed to have found, right at the beginning of her career and with absolute confidence, her own voice.” (Natasha Walter, The Guardian, 2006)Īfter a meteoric rise to prominence with Brick Lane (2003), Ali has emerged as a chronicler of contemporary multicultural Britain able to channel a broad sweep of modern life into well-crafted traditional novelistic forms.

Brick lane by monica ali