Published in 2004
432 pages
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 Ali was voted Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.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.
What is this book about?
A captivating read from a debut novelist, Brick Lane brings the immigrant milieu of East London to vibrant life. With great poignancy, Ali illuminates a foreign world; her well-developed characters pull readers along on a deeply psychological, almost spiritual journey. Through the eyes of two Bangladeshi sisters—the plain Nazneen and the prettier Hasina—we see the divergent paths of the contemporary descendants of an ancient culture. Hasina elopes to a “love marriage,” and young Nazneen, in an arranged marriage, is pledged to a much older man living in London.
Ali’s skillful narrative focuses on Nazneen’s stifling life with her ineffectual husband, who keeps her imprisoned in a city housing project filled with immigrants in varying degrees of assimilation. But Ali reveals a bittersweet tension between the “two kinds of love” Nazneen and her sister experience—that which begins full and overflowing, only to slowly dissipate, and another which emerges like a surprise, growing unexpectedly over years of faithful commitment. Both of these loves have their own pitfalls: Hasina’s passionate romance crumbles into domestic violence, and Nazneen’s marriage never quite reaches a state of wedded bliss.
Though comparisons have drawn between Ali and Zadie Smith, a better comparison might be made between this talented newcomer and the work of Amy Tan, who so deftly portrays the immigrant experience with empathy and joy.
