A significant new postcolonial writer had pulled up a chair.īut with her second novel, Ms.

Ali came along several years ago and, with her remarkable novel Brick Lane, turned England inside out by adopting the perspective of a Bangladeshi woman hemmed in by an arranged marriage and a dreary London housing estate. Naipaul took his seat early on-and with mixed feelings-followed by Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Caryl Philips and Andrea Levy, among others. Ali moved to as a child from Bangladesh has come relatively late to the need to even think about immigrants or citizens of less-than-familiar hues taking a place at literature’s high table.

Like the rest of Europe, the pale Britannia Ms. I was quickly taken over by the community, culture, and vision she presents so forcefully., The Boston Globe Brick Lane is as crisp and urgent as a headline.But the true pleasure of this wonderful novel comes from its timeless sense of wonder and affection for the haplessness of human nature.Monica Ali is not a subscriber to the guest-worker school of fiction, the vaguely held assumption that what was born abroad should stick with and to its own kind. Brick Lane is a great achievement of the subtlest storytelling., Amy Hempelauthor of Tumble Home and Reasons to Live Monica Ali's power as a storyteller, her wisdom and compassionate stance, make this remarkable novel a total-immersion experience. Brick Lane may be Ali's first novel, but it is written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime., The Observer(London)Warm, shrewd, startling and hugely readable: the sort of book you race through greedily, dreading the last page., Evening Standard (London) The joy of this book is its marriage of a wonderful writer with a fresh, rich and hidden world.written with love and compassion for every struggling character in its pages.', The Sunday Times (London) A humanely forgiving story about love.Brick Lane may be Ali's first novel, but it is written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime., The New Republic. I was quickly taken over by the community, culture, and vision she presents so forcefully., The Boston GlobeBrick Laneis as crisp and urgent as a headline.But the true pleasure of this wonderful novel comes from its timeless sense of wonder and affection for the haplessness of human nature., The Observer (London) Warm, shrewd, startling and hugely readable: the sort of book you race through greedily, dreading the last page., The New .Brick Laneis a great achievement of the subtlest storytelling., The Sunday Times (London) A humanely forgiving story about love. Amy Hempel author of Tumble Home and Reasons to Live Monica Ali's power as a storyteller, her wisdom and compassionate stance, make this remarkable novel a total-immersion experience.

Ali monica brick lane