Her skillful narrative focuses on Nazneen’s stifling life with her ineffectual husband, in an existence imprisoned in a city housing project that is filled with immigrants in varying degrees of assimilation. Hasina elopes to have a “love marriage”, while young Nazneed, in her arranged marriage, gets pledged to a much older guy that lives in London. Through the eyes of two Bangladeshi sisters: the plain Nazneen and the prettier Hasina, we see the divergent paths of the contemporary descendants of one ancient culture. “Brick Lane” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2003. They have two kids, who both tell her that she’s the worst storyteller ever, as far as telling stories at the dinner table, at least. Monica lives in South London with Simon Torrance, her husband and a management consultant. “Love Marriage” was a BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick. “Brick Lane” was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in the year 2003. “Brick Lane” was adapted into a movie of the same name, and released in 2007. Her first thing she pitched got accepted by the BBC, she thought it’d be easy, but then it never got made.

She sank her teeth into learning how to write scripts. She found she was depressed when she wasn’t writing and the depression fed into not being able to write, it was a downward spiral. A healthy dose of self doubt is good for any writer, yet there’s also got to be self belief. Monica went through a ten year period of deciding she was not going to write, having experienced a full loss of confidence. It took ten years for “Love Marriage” to be released.

She attended Bolton School and then studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Wadham College, Oxford. Her dad’s originally from the district of Mymensingh. When she was three, her family moved to Bolton, England.

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on Octoto an English mom and a Bangladeshi dad.

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