Monica Ali enjoyed considerable success with her debut, Brick Lane, which rode high on the current interest in discovering more about the private life of recent British immigrants, specifically those from Bangladesh. Publishers looking for the next Zadie Smith hyped it to the skies, and many found the story of Nazneen – brought to live in Tower Hamlets as the dependent wife of a fat, ugly man, from whom she eventually escapes in a torrid love affair – to be, in the words of one critic, ‘written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime’. 

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