Letter from London

Reactions automatically provoked by such media fanfare include two opposite ones. Those eager to keep up with the latest hail the new celebrity and use her and her book as a convenient conversation topic. Others, with upwardly mobile eyebrows, question the motives behind the fanfare. Is it a case of the British cultural establishment creating an icon to represent the sizeable Bangladeshi community here? Or, to put it less pedantically: Is Monica the Asian Zadie Smith? In case the reader needs to be reminded, Zadie Smith, who appears alongside Monica on the 'Granta' list, is a British writer of Afro-Caribbean origin. She burst into fame a few years back with 'White Teeth', a colourful pastiche on multi-cultural London, and has recently published her second novel.

Needless to say, neither reaction is conducive to a healthy critical climate. The first is the reaction of name-droppers, whom we may write off at once. Eyebrow-raisers on the other hand, are often serious readers; it's a pity that the raised brows may prevent them from looking at Monica's book with an open mind.

I believe 'Brick Lane' possesses a dual significance, depending on whether we are looking at it from a Bangladeshi or British perspective. To take the former first: the novel has set a benchmark for Anglophone fiction writers of Bangladeshi origin (shall we coin a word and dub them Banglophone writers?), putting into the shade earlier attempts including those of the expatriates Adib Khan and Syed Manzurul Islam (not to be confused with our friend Syed Manzoorul Islam). For the British the novel is of interest as the first comprehensive fictional portrayal of Bangladeshis that will reach a large--in fact worldwide -- audience. The 'Granta' editor, Ian Jack, commended it specifically for bringing 'news' from Banglatown.

'Brick Lane' may well be the only novel set in London (or even in Britain) with an all-ethnic cast of characters. Not that a few (white) natives and other non-whites aren't sighted, but only in walk-on roles. It is essentially the story of Nazneen, born in 1967 in a village in Mymensingh, married off at eighteen to a much older man, Chanu, who transplants her to a dismal housing estate in Tower Hamlets in London's East End, where she slowly and painfully acquires confidence in her own selfhood.

Nazneen's only connection with the mother country is through letters from her ill-starred younger sister Hasina. Strikingly good-looking (true to her name, for 'hasina' means 'beautiful') and wilful, she elopes with her beau to Khulna. But the romance fades rapidly, the husband turns out to be a wife-beater, and Hasina runs away to Dhaka to join the vast army of garment workers. The perils of a pretty sweatshop worker are graphically illustrated: Hasina is slandered, sacked, sexually exploited. She eventually becomes a domestic and the last we hear of her is that she has eloped with the cook. She is a natural-born survivor. As Nazneen sums up, 'She isn't going to give up.'

Hasina's letters pose a technical problem. As she has even less education than her sister, she is supposed to write imperfect Bengali. But Monica has lost her childhood Bengali, so it is impossible for her to imagine the imperfect Bengali and translate it into imperfect English. She circumvents the problem by devising a kind of broken English. If the reader willingly suspends disbelief, the letters will give her a disturbing glimpse of Bangladeshi anomie. Bengali dialogue poses less of a problem: English with a South Asian slant works quite well. Monica has even rendered some Bengali saws quite effectively.

A pattern of balances, contrasts and inversions underlies the novel: between Bangladesh and Banglatown, for instance, or between individual characters (e.g. the contrasting fortunes of the two sisters) and couples: there is conjugal unhappiness in two couples (balance), but in one case it is the wife (Nazneen) who is unhappy whereas in the other it is the husband, Dr Azad (inversion). The Azads are affluent, but Chanu and Nazneen are precariously balanced on the lower edge of the lower middle class (contrast). Other characters may be similarly related. One effect of this is that the novel's feminism never becomes doctrinaire.

Indeed, Chanu, who in a black-and-white feminist account would have been cast as a villain, is insensitive rather than wicked, and more importantly, emerges as a memorable comic character. His literary genealogy goes back to Dickens, and his lateral family ties link him to the creations of Meera Syal. My favourite comic episode occurs when Chanu takes his family sightseeing and engages a bus conductor in conversation:

'Can you tell me something? To your mind, does the British Museum rate more highly than the National Gallery? Or would you recommend gallery over museum?'

The conductor pushed his lower lip out with his tongue. He stared hard at Chanu, as if considering whether to eject him from the bus.

'In my rating system,' explained Chanu, 'they are neck and neck. It would be good to take an opinion from a local.'

'Where do come from, mate?'

'Oh, just two blocks behind,' said Chanu. 'But this is the first holiday for twenty or thirty years.'

There is a pervasive humour throughout the novel, which naturally speeds the reader along, while the occasional simile makes her pause to relish its aptness (e.g. An infant's 'face squashed into a purple mess, and he made a noise like a thousand whipped puppies.')

Nazneen's affair with Karim, though ultimately unsatisfactory, aids her quest for self-realisation and introduces her to Banglatown politics. I recall a time, circa 1980, when the Bangladeshis there lived in terror of white gangs. Soon after Bangladeshi youths began putting up organised resistance, and eventually secured their territorial rights. After 9/11 Karim and his friends, the 'Bengal Tigers', are up in arms against the Islamophobe 'Lion Hearts', but the novel underscores the ultimate futility of religious politics.

It comes to an open-ended close, with Chanu back in Bangladesh, while Nazneen stays back in Banglatown with their daughters, who incidentally are sure that their father will soon tire of Bangladeshi chaos and return. Meanwhile there is talk of a holiday in the old country. In the last scene Nazneen's daughters take her ice-skating. When she protests that one can't skate in a sari, her friend Razia quips: 'This is England. You can do whatever you like.' This is the novel's last sentence, and I suspect it may be narrowly interpreted by some as a slogan for what the Tories once notoriously described as the Race Relations Industry. But to me it reveals a highly significant fact about expatriate Bangladeshis: the men dream of returning, but not the women, who even as second-class citizens enjoy rights denied them in the mother country. If this makes Bangladeshi men unhappy they should do something to change their society.

MONICA ALI -- an interview

Kaiser Haq: Could we start with the first fact mentioned in the biographical note to your novel: that you were born in Dhaka. Do you have any memories of the place? What prompted your family to move to England--did the Bangladesh independence war have anything to do with it?

Monica Ali: I was born in Dhaka and came to England aged three and a half, with my brother (who was then five) and my mother during the liberation war. The war was certainly the reason that we left. Though my mother is English my parents had no plan to come and live in this country. My father joined us as soon as he could, about nine months later. I was so young when I left that my memories are at most small fragments andI'm not even sure if they are really 'remembered' or if I have constructed them out of stories I've heard from a young age, visualising the word pictures painted for me by my parents.

K.H.: I believe when you arrived in England you spoke only Bengali. How would you describe the process of switching over to English?

M.A.: In Dhaka I was, apparently, an early talker and fluent in Bengali by the time we boarded the plane. My mother was worried that if the attendants at the airport or on the aeroplane heard us (the children) speaking in Bengali they would keep us in Dhaka and not allow us to leave. So she stuffed our mouths with boiled sweets to prevent us from talking. This three-year-old child seemed to have a stubborn disposition. She did not assent to speak to her mother in English and her mother was beginning to have trouble keeping up with her. But when she arrived in England there were only English speakers around. Nine months is quite a long time to a three year old. I still knew Bengali when my father arrived but it was not long before I was beginning to 'rebel' against Bengali. Perhaps I resented my father for 'leaving' us. I don't know. Nor do I know the exact point when the language was gone. There was certainly a span of years during which I understood but would not answer.

K.H.: Where did you grow up in England?

M.A.: I grew up in a northern mill town called Bolton (close to Manchester). There's a sizeable Asian minority there, mostly Gujeratis and Punjabis, a few Bangladeshis. My father had a few Bengali friends but we were not part of any tight-knit community.

I think that my overriding concern as a child was to 'fit in', not to stand out from my white friends at school. Of course, as the child of a so-called 'mixed marriage' (why does that term always sound to me as though the partners must come from different species?) you don't quite fit in anywhere. Good training for a future life as a writer. Standing neither behind a closed door, nor in the thick of things but rather in the shadow of the doorway is a good place from which to observe.

K.H.: Where were you educated? When did you first become interested in literature--as a reader? And when did think of becoming a writer?

M.A.: I was educated at Bolton Girls' School and then at Wadham College, Oxford where I read Modern Greats (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). My appetite for books, especially novels, was always voracious. I was that type of child who walks along the street with her nose in a book, somehow through some sixth sense managing to avoid bumping into things. I read widely and with schoolgirl 'crushes' on a range of authors, anyone from Austen through to Narayan. I do remember that I'd have a sort of French period, then a Russian period and so on. And of course there were always voices from 's ubcontinental' literature (if we can be so general) around. Tagore was certainly revered in our household. I thought, on and off, that it would be nice to be a writer. That, of course, is very different from being gripped by the urge to actually write and that came quite late to me, after the birth of my son who is now four.

K.H.: Could you tell us something about your early attempts, before starting on 'Brick Lane'?

M.A.: I began by writing short stories when he was about a year old and going online (to the internet) where I participated in some writers' groups mutual critiquing of each other's work, that sort of thing. But I soon felt constrained by the short form (though it is an art I hope to master one day). I felt that I didn't have room to breathe. After that it was a question of working up the courage to begin on something larger.

K.H.: How did you zero in on 'Brick Lane'?

M.A.: I decided to set my book in and around Brick Lane (it's mostly set on a fictitious estate off Bethnal Green Road) because that street is still symbolic of the Bangladeshi community here. I wanted to write about quite a tight-knit community and that just seemed like the natural place to set it. Of course Nazneen's story could have happened elsewhere and the essentials of her tale -- her search for the answer to one fundamental question of what it is in her life that she can change and what it is better to accept (or what must be accepted) -- are not unique to her situation. For her, this conflict is framed in terms of her specific religious, cultural, social background, but it is something that each of us must at times wrestle with.

K.H.: What were you doing between university and the time you started full-time writing? Also, if you don't mind, could you introduce our readers to your family--your husband and children?

M.A.: When I graduated from university I worked in publishing (for a couple of small presses) then moved into design and branding. When I had my first child I began to work as a freelancer (doing branding projects, copywriting, writing corporate brochures etc). My husband, Simon, runs his own brainstorming business (he's a management consultant). My children are Felix who is four years old, and Shumi who is two.

K.H.: You chose to write about Bangladeshis in London, who for the most part spoke to each other in Bengali, and you have a character in Bangladesh writing in imperfect Bengali to her sister in London. How did you work out a strategy for dealing with the technical problems that arose?

M.A.: There were a number of issues around English language/Bengali language use. Most of the dialogue is, as you say, supposed to be in Bengali. Nevertheless, within the speech patterns I've sometimes chosen to give a 'subcontinental' inflection for dramatic purposes. This is not a new technique as you will be aware. I also wanted to indicate when Nazneen (the protagonist) attempted English without necessarily adding 'she said, in English' at each point. With a little trial and error this was not too difficult. There was also an issue I only became aware of when my editor read the first draft - when a Bengali youth (Karim) was speaking in slang she'd necessarily assume it was a speech in English, forgetting that every language in the world has its own slang. With a few minor adjustments we overcame this. With Hasina's letters the challenge was to convey her character and essence without becoming bogged down in the problems of 'logic'. I'd envisaged her writing energetic but not very educated (i.e. ungrammatical) Bengali letters to her sister. A 'straight' translation however did not give me the voice I desired and I experimented with a more 'pidgin' English style in order to put her closer to the reader's heart.

K.H.: Could you tell us something about the research involved--into Bangladeshi and Banglatown matters? It'll be of particular interest to aspiring writers.

M.A.: My research into Bangladesh was, I suppose, more or less cumulative over the years --the result of a natural interest. I can cite one more specific example though. I read a book by an academic called Naila Kabeer (who comes from Bangladesh), about Bangladeshi women garment workers in Dhaka and the east end of London. The stories in her case studies were very disparate but what united them was a common impulse towards self-empowerment. I found that book very inspiring. In terms of Banglatown here, I read whatever I could get my hands on, and I went to talk to people in the area--drug workers, youth workers, people at a women's centre, people in restaurants and so on. Then, at a certain point, I stepped back from that in order to allow myself the freedom to imagine things within a context.

K.H.: How conscious were you while writing of the feminist aspect of your novel?

M.A.: Until women have equality in this world I'll be calling myself a feminist. In terms of 'Brick Lane', I did not write with a feminist agenda in mind. I guess, if feminist issues come through, that is purely as a result of writing about the concerns of an individual who happens to be a woman.

K.H.: I believe 'Brick Lane' is being translated into fourteen languages; are they all Western languages?

M.A.: Western (e.g. French, German, Spanish, Portuguese) and Eastern European (e.g. Serbo-Croat, Polish) languages.

K.H.: Were you aware of any influences affecting your writing?

M.A.: In terms of influence on my writing, I wish I could be a more acute judge of that but I will probably have to leave it to others to decide. I admire Narayan for the audacious simplicity of his prose (Raymond Carver also) and if I could wave a magic wand then I'd turn myself into that sort of writer, but clearly that is not the sort of writer I am!

K.H.: Well, I think your prose does possess the beauty of simplicity. Incidentally, I share your admiration of Narayan and Carver. But what about others: how do you relate to the growing tradition of subcontinental --mainly Indian--tradition of Anglophone writing?

M.A.: I read a great deal of that 'subcontinental' Anglophone literature that you mention. Mistry, Rushdie, Seth through to the up-an-coming Jhumpa Lahiri. I am interested in Indian literature and history but I don't necessarily feel any special relationship. I'd read Nadine Gordimer with as much interest. There is this label 'world literature'. I don't know what it is, but I want to read that stuff. I am also interested in many different areas of literature that tap into a 'cross-cultural' experience but don't originate from the subcontinent. Chang Rae Lee for instance, writing about Japanese/Korean Americans, Julie Otsuka in the same area, Brady Udall writing about Native Americans.

K.H.: I hope you will make time to visit Bangladesh. You haven't been there since you came here, have you?

M.A.: No, I haven't been back since 71. I'd love to go for a visit. I tried to do that just after Christmas but I couldn't get a visa, because I put 'writer' on my application form. It was subsequently explained to me that at the time they were very worried about letting any writers in because of the two Channel 4 journalists who had been recently arrested in Dhaka. They didn't realize that writers are not necessarily journalists. It's not going to be easy, between work and the children, but I would very much like to come.

K.H.: I hope you can make it. I'd love to welcome you to the old country--to which I'm returning next month. Thank you for being such a good interviewee.

Kaiser Huq teaches English at Dhaka University.