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Brick Lane Monica Ali

Brick Lane By Monica Ali

Brick Lane by Monica Ali


$22.49
Condition - Very Good
<30 in stock

Summary

Keeping house and rearing children, Nazneen does what is expected of her. Into that fragile peace walks Karim, raising questions of longing and belonging that open her eyes to surprising truths. While Nazneen struggles in Tower Hamlets, her sister Hasina has her own dreams back home in Bangladesh.

Brick Lane Summary

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.

Brick Lane Reviews

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 conflict. Still 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.

About Monica Ali

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.

Additional information

GOR001398865
9780385604840
038560484X
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Transworld Publishers Ltd
20030602
416
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
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Brick Lane