Monica Ali (born October 20, 1967) is a British writer of
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
i origin. She is the author of
Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the
Man Booker Prize for FictionThe Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe...
in 2003. Ali was voted
GrantaGranta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom.-History:Granta was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, edited by R. C. Lehmann . It was started as a periodical featuring student politics, badinage and literary efforts...
's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.
Ali was born in
DhakaDhaka , is the capital of Bangladesh and the principal city of Dhaka District. Dhaka is a megacity and one of the major cities of South Asia...
,
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
to a Pakistani father and
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
mother, moving to
BoltonBolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Situated close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
, England at the age of three, where she was raised.
Monica Ali (born October 20, 1967) is a British writer of
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
i origin. She is the author of
Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the
Man Booker Prize for FictionThe Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe...
in 2003. Ali was voted
GrantaGranta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom.-History:Granta was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, edited by R. C. Lehmann . It was started as a periodical featuring student politics, badinage and literary efforts...
's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.
Biography
Ali was born in
DhakaDhaka , is the capital of Bangladesh and the principal city of Dhaka District. Dhaka is a megacity and one of the major cities of South Asia...
,
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
to a Pakistani father and
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
mother, moving to
BoltonBolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Situated close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
, England at the age of three, where she was raised. Her father is originally from the district of
MymensinghMymensingh is one of the districts of Dhaka division, Bangladesh, and is bordered on the north by Meghalaya state of India and Garo Hills, on the south by Gazipur district, on the east by districts of Netrokona and Kishoreganj, and on the west by districts of Sherpur, Jamalpur and Tangail...
. She went to
Bolton SchoolBolton School is an independent school in Bolton, Greater Manchester, in the North-West of England.-History:Established as Bolton Grammar School, it is not known exactly when the Boys' School was founded, though it is recorded as being a 'going concern' as early as 1516...
and then studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Wadham College,
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
. She lives in
south LondonSouth London is the southern part of London, England. The area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes.-Boundary Commission:...
with her husband, Simon, a management consultant, and their two children, Felix and Shumi.
Brick Lane
Brick Lane — named after
Brick LaneBrick Lane is a long street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. It runs from Swanfield Street in the northern part of Bethnal Green, crosses Bethnal Green Road, passes through Spitalfields and is linked to Whitechapel High Street to the south by the short stretch of...
, a street at the heart of
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
's Bangladeshi community — follows the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who moves to
Tower HamletsThe London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough to the east of the City of London, England and north of the River Thames in East London, taking in much of the East End. It includes much of the redeveloped Docklands region of London, including West India Docks and Canary Wharf...
in London at the age of 18 — her English consisting of "sorry" and "thank you" — to marry an older man, Chanu, described by
The ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In about the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a left-liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-History:The...
as "one of the novel's foremost
miracleA miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be attempted to be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different...
s: twice her age, with a face like a
frogFrogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by long hind legs, a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
, a tendency to quote
HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and the boundless doomed
optimismOptimism is "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome". It is the philosophical opposite of pessimism...
of the self-improvement
junkieThe term 'Junky' is a colloquial term with negative connotations to refer to a person who is thought to be a drug user.Junkie or junky may also refer to:* A person with a drug addiction, most often referring to users of opiates....
, he is both exasperating and, to the reader at least, enormously loveable." Geraldine Bedell wrote in
The Observer that the "most vivid image of the marriage is of her [Nazneen] cutting her husband's
cornsA callus is an especially toughened area of skin which has become relatively thick and hard in response to repeated friction, pressure, or other irritation. Rubbing that is too frequent or forceful will cause blisters rather than allow calluses to form. Since repeated contact is required,...
, a task she seems required to perform with dreadful regularity. [Her husband] is pompous and kindly, full of plans, none of which ever come to fruition, and then of resentment at Ignorant Types who don't promote him or understand his quotations from Shakespeare or his
Open UniversityThe Open University is the distance learning university founded and funded by the UK Government. It is notable for having an open entry policy, i.e. students' previous academic achievements are not taken into account for entry to most undergraduate courses...
race, ethnicity and class module".
Controversy
The novel caused controversy within the
Bangladeshi communityA British Bangladeshi is someone of Bangladesh origin who resides in the United Kingdom having emigrated to the UK and attained citizenship through naturalisation or whose parents did so; they are also known as British Bengalis...
in
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
because of what certain groups perceived as negative portrayal of people from the
SylhetSylhet , is a major city in north-eastern Bangladesh. It is the capital of Sylhet Division and Sylhet District, and was granted metropolitan city status in March 2009. Sylhet is located on the banks of the Surma River and is surrounded by the Jaintia, Khasi and Tripura hills...
region, majority of Bangladeshis originate from this region, Ali however is from Dhaka. Parts of the community were opposed to plans by Ruby Films to film parts of the novel in the Brick Lane area, and formed the "Campaign Against Monica Ali's Film Brick Lane". The film, starring well-known Indian actress
Tannishtha ChatterjeeTannishtha Chatterjee is an Indian actress, best known for her performance in Brick Lane , the film adaptation of Monica Ali's best selling novel of the same name. She was nominated for the British Independent Film Awards as the best actress for Brick Lane along with actresses like Judi Dench,...
, was successfully made and distributed both in the UK and internationally.
The campaign was allegedly supported by
Germaine GreerGermaine Greer is an Australian-born writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
, who wrote that: "As British people know little and care less about the Bangladeshi people in their midst, their first appearance as characters in an English novel had the force of a defining caricature ... [S]ome of the Sylhetis of Brick Lane did not recognise themselves.
BengaliThe Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
s smart under an Islamic prejudice that they are irreligious and disorderly, the impure among the pure, and here was a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name, portraying them as all of that and more." Greer's involvement has angered some within the British literary community.
Salman RushdieSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children , which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent...
has called it "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but ... not unexpected".
Activists told
The GuardianThe Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
they intended to burn copies of Ali's book during a rally to be held on July 30, 2006, but the demonstration passed without incident.
Ali herself portrays the elders of the community as reluctant to face criticism of the youth:
"There were no gangs at all. The white press had made them up to give Bangladeshis a bad name..." (page 423)
Richard & Judy Bookclub
Although Brick Lane was selected for the first Richard & Judy Book Club in 2004, the Richard and Judy producer,
Amanda RossAmanda Ross was recently rated as the most influential person in British publishing. As the creator of the Richard and Judy Book Club, Ross is charged with choosing ten books each year for discussion....
, has subsequently admitted publicly that she regretted selecting Ali's book for the program. Ali failed to turn up for the book club award ceremony, and Ross claims that Ali was not as supportive of the book club as she would have hoped. Brick Lane is the only book that Ross selected for the book club that she says she didn't believe in.
Film
The book was adapted to a
film of the same nameBrick Lane is an award-winning 2007 British drama film directed by Sarah Gavron and adapted from the novel of the same name by Monica Ali. The screenplay was adapted from the novel by Laura Jones and Abie Morgan, and Tannishtha Chatterjee played the lead role...
in 2007.
Miscellaneous
Ali opposes the British government's attempt to introduce the
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which creates an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion...
, something she writes about in her contribution to
Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays published by Penguin in November 2005.
Her writings are perhaps comparable to those of
Bernardine EvaristoBernardine Evaristo MBE FRSL FRSA is a British author.Evaristo was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian Father. She was raised in Woolwich, south east London.She is the author of five books with a sixth due out in 2010....
,
Michel FaberMichel Faber is a Dutch writer of fiction. He writes in English.Faber was born in The Hague, The Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967...
and
Abdulrazak GurnahAbdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian novelist based in the United Kingdom.- Career :From 1980 to 1982, Gurnah lectured at the Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD in 1982...
.
Works
- Brick Lane. Doubleday, June 2003.
- Alentejo Blue. Doubleday, June 2006.
- In The Kitchen. Doubleday, April 2009.
Further reading