Monica Ali

Monica Ali at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009

Monica Ali (born October 20, 1967 in Dhaka , Bangladesh ) is a British writer .

biography

Ali is the daughter of a Bengali father and an English mother. When Ali was three years old, the family of Dhaka moved to Bolton in the UK has to offer. Ali studied philosophy, politics and economics at Wadham College , Oxford . After completing her studies, she worked for a long time in the marketing department of a small publishing house. She lives in London . She has two children, Felix and Shumi, with her husband Simon, a management consultant. In 2003, Ali's debut novel Brick Lane was published , which was nominated for the Booker Prize - the highest British literary award.

Brick Lane

Photo of Brick Lane , 2006

The novel bears the name of Brick Lane , a street in London in the middle of the Bengali immigrant district. It tells the story of Nazneen, a young woman from Bangladesh who came to London in 1985 at the age of eighteen and was married to Chanu, who was twenty years her senior. It is hardly possible for Nazneen to leave the tiny apartment. She has no education and is unable to get to know London and Great Britain. At first she fits into her role. Only the correspondence with her sister Hasina, who broke with Islamic traditions, brings variety to Nazneen's life.

Over the years, Nazneen realizes that Chanu's dreams of prosperity and social advancement will always remain dreams. Ten years after her arrival in England, she also found opportunities to conquer tiny spaces for herself. She supports her daughters, who rebel against her father, begins a love affair with Karim, a Bangladeshi who has lived in England all his life, and after the events of September 11, 2001, decides to live in England.

In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung , Ali said of the novel: “I wanted to challenge the cliché. We see a sari or a headscarf - and already have an opinion about the person underneath it. Now people come to me and say that they see their Indian or Bengali neighbor with completely different eyes. "

The novel was well received by literary critics in the Anglo-American region and was awarded the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year in 2003. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels . In 2007 Brick Lane was filmed under the same name.

During filming in 2006, some of the Bengali immigrants protested against a filming of parts of the novel in the Brick Lane area . The campaign against the filming of Brick Lane ( Campaign Against Monica Ali's Film Brick Lane ) was supported by well-known feminist writer Germaine Greer , who accused Ali in an article in the Guardian that her portrayal of the Bengali immigrants in Brick Lane was inauthentic and full of prejudice . Ali's portrayal of life on Brick Lane caricatures and vilified immigrants; she has never lived in Brick Lane for a long time and also no longer speaks the Bengali language fluently. The well-known Indo-British writer Salman Rushdie , on the other hand, sharply condemned Greer's involvement in the conflict and accused her in a letter to the editor that her criticism of Ali was "petty , sanctimonious and scandalous" ( "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful" ).

Works (selection)

• Brick Lane. Roman ("Brick Lane", 2002). Droemer Knaur, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-426-19620-4 .
• Alentejo Blue. Stories (“Alentejo Blue”, 2006). Droemer, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-426-19744-8 .
• Hotel Imperial. Roman ("In The Kitchen", 2009). Droemer, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-426-19866-7 .
• The glass woman (“Untold Story”, 2011). Droemer, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-426-19929-9 .

literature

• Marie A. Laufer: Literatures in English. Identity processes in the transcultural society; Maxine Hong Kingston - "The woman warrior", Eva Hoffman - "Lost in translation", Monica Ali - "Brick Lane" . VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2008, ISBN 978-3-639-04774-5 .
• Inga Mehlert: A taste of culture. On the importance of food culture in Monica Ali's “Brick Lane”, Zadie Smith's “White Teeth” and Meera Syal's “Anita and me” . University of Hamburg 2009.

Web links

• Monica Ali at the international literature festival berlin
• Literature by and about Monica Ali in the WorldCat bibliographic database

swell

1. ↑ Cf. Monica Ali ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: British Council Literature . Retrieved February 1, 2015. See also writer Monica Ali: Casually Shattering Dreams . In: Der Spiegel , April 29, 2004. Retrieved on February 2, 2015. In contrast to other sources, Ali's age is given here as four when the family moved to England. 
2. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of March 18, 2004
3. ↑ Cf. Monica Ali ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: British Council Literature . Retrieved February 1, 2015. 
4. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
5. ↑ See Brick Lane (2007) . On: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved February 2, 2015.
6. ↑ See 'You sanctimonious philistine' - Rushdie v Greer, the sequel . In: The Guardian , July 29, 2006. Retrieved February 1, 2015.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Anette Gruber is the translator.