num_pages: 413
description: Nazneen's inauspicious entry to the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a Bangladeshi village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu. Her life in London's Tower Hamlets is, on the surface, calm. For years, keeping house and rearing children, she does what is expected of her. Yet Nazneen walks a tightrope stretched between her daughters' embarrassment and her husband's resentments. Chanu calls his elder daughter the little memsahib. 'I didn't ask to be born here,' says Shahana, with regular finality. Into that fragile peace walks Karim. He sets questions before her, of longing and belonging; he sparks in her a turmoil that reflects the community's own; he opens her eyes and directs her gaze - but what she sees, in the end, comes as a surprise to them both. While Nazneen journeys along her path of self-realization, a way haunted by her mother's ghost, her sister Hasina, back in Bangladesh, rushes headlong at her life, first making a 'love marriage', then fleeing her violent husband. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity.
language: English
title: Brick Lane
titlecomplete: Brick Lane
genres: Fiction, Asia, British Literature, Book Club, India, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Bangladesh
ratings_count: 32868
places: Bangladesh, London, England
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Orwell Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Audie Award
category: Fiction, Abridged, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Transworld Pub