Oliver Baum

Monica Ali's Novel Brick Lane. A Critical Reflection of Post-Colonialism Oliver Baum

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 3.0, University of Marburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: 10008 PS: London in Contemporary Post-Colonial Literature, language: English, abstract: This research paper deals with Monica Ali's first novel Brick Lane, an epic saga about a Bangladeshi family living in London, which explores the British immigration experience. The novel is highly disputed with its most important aspects of identity, belonging and community problems. People who actually live in the estate of Brick Lane feel being patronized by Ali's novel the more or the less. Just to show how critics reacted to Ali´s masterpiece, I will give two examples briefly. Ian Jack, the editor of the Granta Magazine said: "Monica Ali is not from Sylhet [which lies in the far north-east of the country next to the Indian state of Assam and was, until the partition of India, part of Assam and not Bengal] and nor are her novel´s principal characters. Sylhettis, however, are the people her characters (though not their author) live among. I spent a week [...] in Sylhet [...]. [...] When I got back to Calcutta, I got into a shouting match with a taxi-driver about The Satanic Verses. 'But it´s only a novel,' I said. 'You know, personal, made-up, invented - fiction.' 'Exactly', he said. 'Fiction. Lies.' Brick Lane is a fine first novel, but nobody should be surprised if it raises similar arguments. In a way, they are a compliment to it an to an ambitious idea of what fiction can still do." Matthew Taylor, The Guardian, said: "Community Leaders from the neighbourhood in the East End of London that inspired Monica Ali´s Booker-nominated first novel, Brick Lane, have branded her work a 'despicable insult' to Bangladeshis living in the area. The Greater Sylhet Welfare and Development Council, which represents many of Britain´s 500,000 Bangladeshis, has written an 18-page letter to the author outlining their objections to