Brick Lane’s queen strikes gold on the silver screen

Four years ago I published a book set in the East End, about a troubled young woman who lives and works in the vibrant multiethnic community of Bethnal Green. It was fun to write, and reasonably well-reviewed. But just before publication I turned around and saw a magnificent tidal wave filling the literary horizon, and approaching fast. ‘Another book about the East End,’ I thought to myself. ‘Wow, that looks rather impressive. I wonder what it is? . . . Glug. Glug. Glug.’

The tidal wave was a debut novel of stunning confidence and elegance called Brick Lane and, four years on, I am sitting in a Dulwich bistro with its author, Monica Ali, to discuss the film of the book, which is about to be released. Directed by Sarah Gavron, the movie is a jewel in its own right: a variation on a theme, rather than a straightforward translation of text to screen. But it is true to the delicacy of the original, the story of Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi woman who is brought to the East End by an arranged marriage, and finds illicit love in the arms of a young radical, Karim. The performance of Tannishtha Chatterjee, a prominent Indian arthouse actor, as Nazneen is particularly luminous.

Ali, who turns 40 this Saturday, made a conscious decision not to intervene in the making of the movie. ‘I thought I either have to be fully involved and try to write the screenplay myself, or I have to step away. I would have wanted to meddle if I had been involved at all, that wasn’t the right way to go. I had a feeling that if it was going to work as a film — which it probably wouldn’t because most films of a book generally don’t — then it has to be somebody else’s vision again, and somebody else’s work of art that they want to give birth to again, not just me trying to keep it true to the book.