Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Nazneen's inauspicious entry to the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a Bangladeshi village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu. Her life in London's Tower Hamlets is, on the surface, calm. For years, keeping house and rearing children, she does what is expected of her. Yet Nazneen walks a tightrope stretched between her daughters' embarrassment and her husband's resentments. Chanu calls his elder daughter the little memsahib. 'I didn't ask to be born here,' says Shahana, with regular finality. Into that fragile peace walks Karim. He sets questions before her, of longing and belonging; he sparks in her a turmoil that reflects the community's own; he opens her eyes and directs her gaze - but what she sees, in the end, comes as a surprise to them both. While Nazneen journeys along her path of self-realization, a way haunted by her mother's ghost, her sister Hasina, back in Bangladesh, rushes headlong at her life, first making a 'love marriage', then fleeing her violent husband. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity.
Set in Tower Hamlets, this contemporary novel of the life of an Asian immigrant girl draws the reader into a highly affecting world of love, fate and cultural conflictStill in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed man who is 20 years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End. Nazneen knows no English, and is forced to depend on her husband. But unlike him she is practical and wise, and befriends a fellow Asian girl Razia, who helps her understand the strange ways of her adopted home. A resonant drama from a fierce new literary talent; Monica Ali is a name to watch.
Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She is one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists of the decade, Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards and has been nominated for most of the major literary prizes in Britain. BRICK LANE was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize for political writing and the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Internationally there has been similar recognition including, in the United States, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times 'First Fiction' Prize where the book was shortlisted. Monica Ali lives in London with her husband and two children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780385604840 |
| ISBN 10 | 038560484X |
| Title | Brick Lane |
| Author | Monica Ali |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Transworld Publishers Ltd |
| Year published | 2003-06-02 |
| Number of pages | 416 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Guardian First Book Award 2003, Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 2003, Short-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2003 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |