It means you are not credited with imagination, creativity, intelligence or the ability to research.' To be 'authentic', people have very particular expectations about what those voices should be saying or writing. 'I think it happens with writers of colour. What it felt like, she says, was an 'obliteration of the self'. 'I get this question very often - 'Are you trying to get away from Brick Lane?' And what would that mean - that I'm trying to get away from my ethnicity or my skin colour? It's a bizarre question, and quite insulting when you really think about it.' 'I think what was difficult is my perception, whether this is right or wrong, that my authenticity was being questioned. The issue has taken her years of therapy to untangle. 'I don't think it's the right way of describing it at all. Another called it 'bewildering'.Īli looks uncomfortable when asked if her 'downward spiral' was triggered by the response to her last book, as some news outlets have suggested. One critic, whom Ali still quotes today, said Untold Story seemed like 'a curious marriage of author and subject'. They are Alentejo Blue (2006), set in a Portuguese village In The Kitchen (2009), about a chef in a London hotel and Untold Story, which imagines what happens after a character very much like Princess Diana fakes her death and escapes to America. Her next three books, however, met with mixed reviews. It was nominated for the 2003 Man Booker prize and made into a movie. She made waves with her best-selling debut Brick Lane ( buy here, borrow here), about a Bangladeshi teenager who moves to London after an arranged marriage to an older man. Their daughter Shumi, 21, and son Felix, 22, are now in university. She is married to management consultant Simon Torrance. She moved to Britain at age three and studied politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford. 'Are you joking? No, never.'Īli was born in Dhaka to a Bengali father and English mother. Asked if sex was talked about at home when she was growing up, Ali laughs.

Monica ali novels