Brick Lane

• About the Author
  
• Acclaim for Brick Lane
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Epigraphs
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
  
• PEACETIME
  

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She is one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists of the decade, Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards and has been nominated for most of the major literary prizes in Britain.
Brick Lane
was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize for political writing and the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It has been translated into 26 languages.

Internationally there has been similar recognition including, in the United States, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the
Los Angeles Times
'First Fiction' Prize where the book was shortlisted.

Monica Ali lives in London with her husband and two children, and is working on her next novel.

Acclaim for
Brick Lane:

'Monica Ali has aroused high expectations for her debut novel – and they are not disappointed . . . Ali's book is a shining example of the rule that a writer should "show" rather than "tell". Her strength lies in minute observations. By delineating, with wit and gentle irony, her characters' physical quirks, habits, clothes or voices, she brings them alive . . . Brick Lane is a wonderful debut'
Sunday Telegraph

'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'
Boston Globe

'The joy of this book is its marriage of a wonderful writer with a fresh, rich and hidden world. Her achievement is huge. She has made
Brick Lane
one of those all-encompassing reads that you put down reluctantly and rush back to as soon as you can. And all this rich observation of life is unfolded by a writer with a gorgeous and fertile gift for simile . . . there are no dull patches, no cut corners, no clichés in Monica Ali's writing'
Evening Standard

www.booksattransworld.co.uk

'Splendid . . . Daring . . . Brilliant . . . Refreshing . . . Intensely gripping and involving . . . The power of Ali's book is the way in which it charts its heroine's slow accumulation of English, her gathering confidence as a mother and a wife, and the undulations of her marriage to a man whom she eventually learns to respect and perhaps even to love . . .
Brick Lane
is a great achievement of the subtlest storytelling'
The New Republic

'The heart of the novel, and its most assured achievement, is Nazneen herself. Ali portrays her journey from submissive teenager to hesitantly independent mother with poetic intelligence . . . that Ali does this not with stylistic fireworks but with measured, exact prose, only makes her success more commendable'
The Times Literary Supplement

'A genuinely moving portrait. . .
Brick Lane
manages to do many of the things that fiction does best'
Washington Post Book World

'Monica Ali is a fabulous writer, and Brick Lane is finely observed, deeply compassionate, wry and tender' Meera Syal

'Virtuosic . . . at once sophisticated and innocent, compassionate and entertaining'
Los Angeles Times

'A very special novel – I adored it. It gave me everything I crave in a novel, taking me into a life and culture I know so little about. . .entertaining, moving and fascinating' Margaret Forster

'Ali's novel is warm, shrewd, startling and hugely readable: the sort of book you race through greedily, dreading the last page . . . The themes are the big ones – identity, self-determination, the freight of family – and they are kept afloat by the buoyancy of Ali's characterisation, which occasionally verges on the Dickensian without every resorting to caricature. In Nazneen's world, everyone is convincingly governed by their own individual logic. Throughout, one is struck by Ali's ability to shift gracefully from comedy to tragedy and back again'
Observer

'Ali writes with a mixture of passion and restraint that is totally exhilarating'
India Today

'Entertaining and full of insight . . . talented, thoughtful and mature' Hilary Mantel

'Ali's ability to layer her narrative with ambiguities marks her as a major novelist'
Sydney Morning Herald

'Monica Ali's first novel,
Brick Lane,
exposes a hidden world and allows the reader a detailed and fascinating glimpse into British Bengali culture. Ian Jack noted, when he explained why the Granta panel had included Ali in their list of the 20 most promising young British novelists, that her prose brings us "news" about contemporary Britain in a way that only fiction can. I certainly feel more informed about the people who are my next-door neighbours that I did before I read this book'
New Statesman

'A novel that not only justifies the hype but effortlessly opens up a new and potentially rich seam in mainstream British fiction'
The Scotsman

'A rich, panoramic sweep of a novel centred on the often harsh, sometimes unexpected and always compelling experiences of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi village girl sent to East London in an arranged marriage,
Brick Lane
is beautifully conceived and wrought. Its emotionally literate story-telling is leavened with wry humour and informed by a politicised consciousness'
Metro

'Ali has an impressive command of her story, but her real gift is in the richness of the lives she has created, populating Nazneen's London with a very entertaining cast of comic characters. Her main target is pride, from Mrs Islam, a pompous but corrupt meddler, to Karim, a militant Islamic youth and adulterer, and, most of all, Chanu, whose self-delusion is made laughable but also sickening. Ali skewers presumption and prejudice at every turn'
The Times

'A début novel full of confidence and stylistic zip that announces a significant new voice in contemporary fiction . . .
Brick Lane
invites the reader into a perfectly invented world and holds them there'
Sunday Herald

'Vibrant, innovative and amazingly assured. A respect for fate instilled by her mother means Nazneen must accept passively whatever life brings. As the least dynamic character in the novel, she becomes a tool for the author's powers of observation – and these are magnificent, placing Ali among Britain's greatest writers, never mind young or old'
The Spectator

'What's so remarkable about Brick Lane is its assurance: the writing is laudably unfussy, the tone incredibly tender'
Time Out

'Monica Ali was a name to watch before this, her debut novel, was published thanks to her inclusion in the Granta list of best young British novelists.
Brick Lane
– the story of a Bangladeshi woman stuck in the East End in an unhappy arranged marriage – will get a lot of attention. Deservedly so'
Vogue

'Ali writes with the same raw power as Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie . . . her story is a potent mix of bleak fortitude, conflicting cultures and wonderful lyrical passages. Highly recommended'
Marie Claire

'The book fulfils all expectations. Ali is a consummate storyteller and has that rare ability to draw the reader into what is, for most, an unfamiliar world'
Good Housekeeping

'Ali's well-rounded character, pithy observations and superb writing make fantastic entertainment'
Woman & Home

'Beautifully written and refreshingly different'
Company

'Absolutely modern in its sharply observed representation of a complex and fragmented society, this is a novel replete with old-fashioned virtues . . . Ali's use of language is as versatile as her imagination. She can do lyrical description. She can do narrative of compelling tension and brevity. She can be sardonic about her characters' posturing and tender about their griefs. Her dialogue is vigorous and idiosyncratic, and she rises with bravura to high points in the narrative.
Brick Lane
may be Ali's first novel, but it is written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime'
Sunday Times

'Brick Lane
is deeply rewarding . . . a popular success fueled by a critical one . . . One feels the enabling weight of the 19th century, of a history of novels about people cut off from their origins, adrift in Europe's great cities . . . Monica Ali has an inborn generosity that cannot be learned'
New York Times Book Review

MONICA ALI

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781407040868

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

BRICK LANE
A BLACK SWAN BOOK :

ISBN: 9781407040868

Version 1.0

Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers

PRINTING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published 2003
Black Swan edition published 2004
14
Copyright © Monica Ali 2003

Lines from the 'Song of Students' are quoted from
Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water
by James J. Novak, translated by Mizanur Rahman [Indiana University Press, 1993). Extracts from Baul songs are taken from
The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal,
translated by Deben Bhattacharya (Hohm Press, 1999). Lines from 'The Golden Boat' are quoted from
Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems,
translated by William Radice (Penguin, 1985) Copyright © William Radice, 1985. Extracts from
The Koran
are translated by N. J. Dawood (Penguin Classics, 1956, fifth revised edition 1990) Copyright © N. J. Dawood, 1956, 1959, 1966, 1968, 1974, 1990. 'Shout': Words and Music by O'Kelly Isley, Ronald Isley and Rudolph Isley © Copyright 1959 and 1962 EMI Longitude Music, USA. EMI Music Publishing (WP) Limited, 127 Charing Cross Road, London WC2. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. The publishers have made every effort to contact the copyright owners of all the extracts reproduced in this book. In the few cases where they have been unsuccessful they invite copyright holders to contact them direct.

The right of Monica Ali to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Condition of Sale

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

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