Monica Ali
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Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh to Bangladeshi and English parents, moving to England at the age of three. She grew up in Bolton, Northern England near Manchester and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Wadham College, Oxford.
Brick Lane follows the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who moves to Tower Hamlets in London at the age of 18 — her English consisting of "sorry" and "thank you" — to marry an older man, Chanu, described by The Observer as "one of the novel's foremost miracles: twice her age, with a face like a frog, a tendency to quote Hume and the boundless doomed optimism of the self-improvement junkie, he is both exasperating and, to the reader at least, enormously loveable. [link]
Ali was voted Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript of Brick Lane.
The novel caused controversy within the Bangladeshi Sylheti community residing in the UK owing to its negative portrayal of Sylhetis.
She lives in south London with her husband, Simon, a management consultant, and their two children, Felix and Shumi.
She opposes the British government's attempt to introduce the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, something she writes about in her contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays published by Penguin in November 2005.
Further reading
- Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Doubleday, UK Edition June 2003.
- Ali, Monica. Alentejo Blue. Doubleday, UK Edition June 2006.
- Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Scribner, US Edition September 2003.
- Ali, Monica. Alentejo Blue. Scribner, US Edition June 2006.
References
- ["Ali's in Wonderland"] by Harriet Lane, The Observer, June 1, 2003
- ["Full of East End promise"] by Geraldine Bedell, The Observer, June 15, 2003
External links
- [Monica Ali] at [www.contemporarywriters.com]
- [Monica Ali] at the Internet Book List
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