Brick Lane

This exciting and deeply moving debut novel follows the tumultuous life of Nazneen from her birth in a Bangladeshi village hut, to her arranged marriage to Chanu and the subsequent move to London’s Tower Hamlets. 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.