Brick Lane
Explores Bangladeshi Life in Britain
Bangladesh-born
British author, Monica Ali, has taken the literary world by storm with her
debut novel, Brick Lane. Her novel was short listed for the Booker Prize
and she has been named one of top 20 British authors under the age of 40.
Brick Lane is the London suburb where many Bangladeshis who migrate to Britain end up.
The story is about Nazneen, a young girl who leaves her native Bangladesh to marry an older man in England and live in London’s Tower Hamlets housing estate, a far cry from the green fields and rural community she is used to. She is confused by an alien culture and by her strange husband.
“The book was inspired by my family and how I grew up,” says the 35-year-old Ali. “My father told me lots of stories about village life when I was little. I suppose I’m keeping that oral tradition alive.”
Ali came to Britain when she was three with her English mother and brother. Her Bengali father came nine months later. She studied at Oxford and now lives in London with her husband and two children.
“I did a lot of research around Brick Lane, talking to people in the streets and from community groups such as the Bangladesh Youth Movement,” says Ali. “But the book is fiction, interwoven with my own memories and those of my family. On one level it’s an examination of immigrant life, but it’s also a coming-of-age story, not of a young girl, but of a woman. I am very interested in the idea of fate and Nazneen struggles with how responsible she is for her own life and what’s within her power to change.”
Nazneen’s gradual realization that there are some things in her life she can control is movingly described and Ali does not shy away from tackling bigger issues of racism and Islamic fundamentalism.
Brick Lane is available at Etcetera bookshop.