Monica Ali is not a subscriber to the guest-worker school of fiction, the vaguely held assumption that what was born Monica Ali is not a subscriber to the guest-worker school of fiction, the vaguely ...

One of the things that distinguished Monica Ali’s 2003 debut novel, “Brick Lane,” was its insistence on London as fully home to its Bangladeshi-born characters. Even the more recent immigrants, like ...

Brick Lane, by Monica Ali. Scribner. 369 pages. $25. Cultural encounters between East and West, or developed and developing countries, or First and Third World, have provided fertile territory for ...

A lot of young writers come out with seemingly “better” books than “Brick Lane” — books that are more ambitious, that feature paragraph after paragraph of artfully turned prose, that grapple with ...

Nothing seems more at odds with the go-getting, opportunity-seizing American sensibility than the notion that inertia could be the most powerful force in one’s life. Anton Chekhov, the high priest of ...

Monica Ali's 2003 debut novel, Brick Lane, would be a hard act for anyone to follow. While the book was still in manuscript form, Ali was hailed as one of the best novelists of her generation.

"Brick Lane," follows the travails, conflicting emotions and quiet liberation of a Muslim woman in London. Monica Ali’s elegant and critically trumpeted debut novel, “Brick Lane,” about the travails, ...