description: With its gritty Tower Hamlets setting, this sharply observed contemporary novel about the life of an Asian immigrant girl deals cogently with issues of love, cultural difference and the human spirit. The pre-publicity hype about Brick Lane was precisely the kind to set alarm bells ringing (we've heard it so often before), but, for once, the excitement is fully justified: Monica Ali's debut novel demonstrates that there is a new voice in modern fiction to be reckoned with.Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with a man considerably older than her--a man whose expectations of life are so low that misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor: more able to deal with the ways of the world, and a better judge of the vagaries of human behaviour. She makes friends with another Asian girl, Razia, who is the conduit to her understanding of the unsettling ways of her new homeland.This is a novel of genuine insight, with the kind of characterisation that reminds the reader at every turn just what the novel form is capable of. Every character (Nazneen, her disappointed husband and her resourceful friend Razia) is drawn with the complexity that can really only be found in the novel these days. In some ways, the reader is given the same all-encompassing experience as in a Dickens novel: humour and tragedy rub shoulders in a narrative that inexorably grips the reader. Whether or not Monica Ali can follow up this achievement is a question for the future; it's enough to say right now that Brick Lane is an essential read for anyone interested in current British fiction. --Barry Forshaw
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: HarperCollins