About "Brick Lane: A Novel"
After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how must she comfort the na‹ve and disillusioned Chanu?
As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.
Monica Ali's splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvellous and the terrifying spiral together.
Reviews
03.10.2009 / Patrick Mc Coy / Tokyo, Japan
Bengalis in London
I was inspired to read Monica Ali's debut novel Brick Lane, about Bangladeshis in London by my recent trip to Dhaka. It is an interesting novel that explores identity and the women's role in a society that still practices arranged marriages. It has come under attack for portraying some Benga...
[> more]04.08.2009 / Iris M. / Washington, DC
This book stinks
I read this for a literature course. Had I not been required to read it, I would have stopped long before page three-hundred whatever.
Personally, I found it too long for the low quality detail and plot Monica Ali gives us.
18.07.2009 / Bookworm / Illinois
Worth reading
I enjoyed this book about a Bangladeshi girl who starts to question her choices in life.
Nazneen agrees to an arranged marriage, because it's the traditional custom and she wants to please her father. Her free-thinking sister runs away to marry a local boy she loves. The book follow...
[> more]The book "Brick Lane: A Novel" belongs to the following genres:
Fiction Fiction - General Fiction - Historical Romance: Modern Fiction / General Fiction / Literary General Historical - General Romance - General Bangladeshis England London (England) Women immigrants Young women
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About Monica Ali
Monica Ali (born October 20, 1967) 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.
Biography
Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh to a Bangladeshi father and English mother, moving to Bolton, England at the age of three, where she was raised. Her father is originally from the district of Mymensingh.[Suman Gupta, Tope Omoniyi (2007). The Cultures of Economic Migration. Ashgate Publishing. pp. 33.] She went to Bolton School and then studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Wadham College, Oxford. She lives in south London with her husband, Simon, a management consultant, and their two children, Felix and Shumi.
Brick Lane
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