At the tender age of nineteen, Nazneen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village home for a block of flats in London's East End. In this new world, where poor people can be fat and even dogs go on diets, she struggles to make sense of her existence - and to do her duty to her husband. A man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliance. But Nazneen submits, as she must do, to Fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demons of discontent. Until Karim, a young radical, steps into the picture. Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazneen to take control of her life...