Brick Lane’s queen strikes gold

Brick Lane’s queen strikes gold on the silver screen

Matthew d'Ancona

17 October 2007

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An interview with Monica Ali

Born in Dhaka in 1967, to a Bangladeshi father and English mother, Ali moved to this country aged three, and now has two children of her own, aged eight and six. She read PPE at Oxford and, as the preceding paragraphs make clear, she has retained a sharp interest in analytic philosophy. She denies being much drawn to metaphysics, but there is certainly a preoccupation with fate and personal choice in Brick Lane and in its (underrated) successor, Alentejo Blue, a collage of interlocked narratives set in the Portuguese village of Mamarrosa. Nazneen’s story has made the former novel a global bestseller because it is universal rather than specific to an east London postcode, addressing questions of identity, home and the extent of personal freedom in a world of apparently limitless choice and mobility.

‘It’s a book that really travelled,’ says its author. ‘For instance, in the States they don’t have much of a Bangladeshi community there, a lot of people responded in that way. They would tell me a story — “Oh, my grandfather was from Russia, and he always talked about going back to the old country, he never made it in the end” — or he did, and it had changed so radically, and he came back with his views again changed. So I think all of those feelings of longing and belonging are issues of our time.’

And this, of course, is one of many reasons why the novel remains such a resilient form: it provides an imaginative context in which world-views can collide and intermingle, without the necessity of definitive judgment or polemical certainty.

‘Various people keep announcing that fiction is over and the novel is dead, don’t they? V.S. Naipaul did it the other day didn’t he, bless him! It has an opposition but I think there is a space in the novel to explore without having to be prescriptive or pointing in one direction or another. That’s the great thing about fiction, that you can go along on somebody else’s journey with them to try to understand the world from another point of view. That’s the reason for writing fiction for me, that you can see through somebody else’s eyes.’

Another novel is in the pipeline, and she admits that when a work is in progress it is all-consuming, the one area of her life where she feels she is in the hands of fate. ‘I take the kids to school in the morning, and then I work until three o’clock. Then I’m with them, and then I work in the evening as well. I don’t work at the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, but I work far too late into the night. When I’m working I’m just working, and then I can stop and have down time. But I cannot leave it alone, it’s not very healthy really. I lie awake at night thinking about some small detail and the next day I think if I’d had a proper night’s sleep, I’d be much more efficient today!’

I doubt she has a choice, which helps to explain why she is already one of the best novelists in this country and has the potential to become one of the most important writers in the language. She has the steel, as well as the talent, to go all the way.

All power to her elbow, I say.

Brick Lane premières at the London Film Festival on 26 October and goes on general release on 16 November.