After a philosophy, politics and economics degree at Oxford University, she worked in publishing-for radical small presses Pluto and Verso, where she was sales and marketing manager-before moving to a design and branding agency. The family moved to England when civil war broke out, and Ali grew up in Bolton. The author herself was born in Dhaka in 1967 to a Bengali father and an English mother. That act of empathy seems important to Ali-she says she was pleased when a friend who had read the book in proof form told her that only after finishing it had she realised it contained almost no white characters. As a matter of demographics, few of the book's readers are likely to have experienced either location yet Ali's skill as a writer eases the imaginative leap into the mind of a woman who, at the start of the novel, speaks no English and experiences London as a baffling and alien environment. However, all hype apart, this acute, involving and slyly humorous book is rapidly winning over many fans within the trade.īrick Lane asks the reader to imagine him or herself into the world of Nazneen, a young woman born in a village in Bangladesh who goes to live with her older husband Chanu on a council estate in London's Tower Hamlets. Monica Ali's début Brick Lane (Doubleday, £12.99, 2nd June, 038560484X), which was acquired with much fanfare by Transworld and has already taken its author on to Granta's Best of Young British list, arrives with a heavy weight of expectation, which can be a mixed blessing for newcomers.
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