Beauty by Raphael Selbourne
Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having disgraced her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Forced onto the jobseeker's treadmill and under extreme domestic pressure, she cracks and runs away. Her encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, and strangers in the city streets, complicated by the restrictions and comfort of her language and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly, Staffordshire bull terrier-breeding exoffender, and Peter, a middle-class underachiever on the rebound from a bitter relationship. With determination and good humour, Beauty moves ever closer to making her choice between family duty and personal freedom. All the while, however, her brothers are searching for her across town. Can she make the choice herself, before she's forced to? A sharply rendered, compassionate and challenging portrait of a fragmented, multicultural urban England.
Selbourne brilliantly plays out a comedy of conflicting cultural and class expectations, repeatedly confounding reader's expectationsThrough Beauty herself, he gives the tale of the innocent abroad an original twist * Financial Times *
Selbourne writes convincingly both of Beauty's Bengali household and Mark's working-class world of casual sex, pubs and hard manual labour. This first novel is also very funny * Independent *
Selbourne uses Beauty's naive but moral vision to show us our own excesses of indifference, ugliness, drunkenness, sex consumption and much besides. Black and white it isn't, despite the mixed race context * Times *
Shocking, explosive and tender - I could not put it down * Maggie Gee *
Selbourne writes convincingly both of Beauty's Bengali household and Mark's working-class world of casual sex, pubs and hard manual labour. This first novel is also very funny * Independent *
Selbourne uses Beauty's naive but moral vision to show us our own excesses of indifference, ugliness, drunkenness, sex consumption and much besides. Black and white it isn't, despite the mixed race context * Times *
Shocking, explosive and tender - I could not put it down * Maggie Gee *
Born in Oxford within a distinguished academic family, Raphael studied politics at Sussex University, before moving to Italy where he was a translator, sold TV advertising and scooters. He has also taught in China and since 2004 in the West Midlands, where he now lives. He interrupted an MA in Islamic Studies at Birmingham University to write Beauty.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780955647673 |
| ISBN 10 | 0955647673 |
| Title | Beauty |
| Author | Raphael Selbourne |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Profile Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2009-09-01 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Prizes | Winner of Costa First Novel Award 2009 (Australia) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |