Brick Lane
By the bestselling author of LOVE MARRIAGE
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3.8 • 52 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
***As dramatised on BBC Radio Four***
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
THE SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A RICHARD AND JUDY PICK
'Written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime' SUNDAY TIMES
Still in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed older man. Away from her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English, and is forced to depend on her husband.
Confined in her tiny flat, Nazneen sews furiously for a living, shut away with her buttons and linings - until the radical Karim steps unexpectedly into her life. On a background of racial conflict and tension, they embark on a love affair that forces Nazneen finally to take control of her fate.
A GRANTA BEST OF BRITISH YOUNG NOVELIST
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD
'A brilliant evocation of sensuality' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A novel that will last' GUARDIAN
'Highly evolved and accomplished' OBSERVER
Reader's love for BRICK LANE:
'Memorable and gripping' *****
'The kind of book that changes your perception of the world' *****
'This has become a classic and i can see why'*****
'Funny, sharp and very touching' *****
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
From the author: “What was most interesting about the response to Brick Lane? I think people’s surprise that someone they might pass in the street—a brown woman in a sari who doesn’t speak English, who they might not grant full humanity—could be a real person too! In very crude terms, there was an element of that. Another factor is a lot of people have an immigrant story somewhere in their background. Perhaps from a very different culture or heritage, but they can relate. Also, it’s a funny book—people tend to enjoy that too.
“And I find that, particularly in America—which is the nation of immigrants after all—there were a lot of things that people could relate to just within that idea of a longing for home, nostalgia, a difficulty fitting in or conflict between the different generations. I grew up in Bolton, and there was a sizeable Asian minority there: people who’d quite often come to work in the mills in Lancashire, and because the mills started to close down were therefore seen as unwanted and extraneous. Plus, there were tensions, of course, in the 1970s when I was growing up. The National Front were quite strong. I’d walk over from school past swastikas and the NF signs. So I was always aware of those silos and differences and racism. But the tension between thinking, ‘Oh, well, groups want to stick together and form their own communities and be separate’—you have to butt that up against the host community, whether they are accepting and welcoming, or not. There’s always an interplay between those two things. You can’t look at one without looking at the other. Now, Brick Lane is an A-level text for English Literature on various exam boards. So it’s finding new generations of readers, which is wonderful.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.BRICK LANEMonica Ali. Scribner, $25 (384p) The immigrant world Ali chronicles in this penetrating, unsentimental debut has much in common with Zadie Smith's scrappy, multicultural London, though its sheltered protagonist rarely leaves her rundown East End apartment block where she is surrounded by fellow Bangladeshis. After a brief opening section set in East Pakistan Nazneen's younger sister, the beautiful Hasina, elopes in a love marriage, and the quiet, plain Nazneen is married off to an older man Ali begins a meticulous exploration of Nazneen's life in London, where her husband has taken her to live. Chanu fancies himself a frustrated intellectual and continually expounds upon the "tragedy of immigration" to his young wife (and anyone else who will listen), while letters from downtrodden Hasina provide a contrast to his idealized memories of Bangladesh. Nazneen, for her part, leads a relatively circumscribed life as a housewife and mother, and her experience of London in the 1980s and '90s is mostly indirect, through her children (rebellious Shahana and meek Bibi) and her variously assimilated neighbors. The realistic complexity of the characters is quietly stunning: Nazneen shrugs off her passivity at just the right moment, and the supporting cast Chanu, the ineffectual patriarch; Nazneen's defiant and struggling neighbor, Razia (proud wearer of a Union Jack sweatshirt); and Karim, the foolish young Muslim radical with whom Nazneen eventually has an affair are all richly drawn. By keeping the focus on their perceptions, Ali comments on larger issues of identity and assimilation without drawing undue attention to the fact, even gracefully working in September 11. Carefully observed and assured, the novel is free of pyrotechnics, its power residing in Ali's unsparing scrutiny of its hapless, hopeful protagonists.
Customer Reviews
The Present is Another Country
This is not an easy read for a middle-aged white man. The view of London is both familiar and foreign and Nazneen’s life, though sympathetically written and well observed has, for this reader some unanswered questions. Why does she fall for Karim, why does her culture not protect her from an adulterous relationship and why does she see Chanu as a semi-tragic figure of fun straight out of It Ain’t ‘alf Hot Mum a programme she will never have seen.
I’m glad I read this but won’t read it again.
Worth every penny
Still as wonderful and pertinent as the day it was published. A Bangladeshi matriarch, not unlike an Almodovar one, guides her two daughters and herself to independence in London.