Monica Ali

«Monica Ali es siempre una sorprendente e inteligente escritora, poco rutinaria y llena de talento.» Mercedes Monmany, Abcd «El estilo maduro y reposado y la solidez de sus tramas señalan una maestrí

What if Princess Diana hadn''t died? What if the tragedy in the Alma Tunnel never happened, and she were still alive today? Where wouldshe be, and what would she be doing? Diana''s life and marriage were fairy tale and nightmare rolled into one Adored by millions, in herpersonal life she suffered heartbreak and betrayal Within a life of privilege, she frequently felt trapped and alone...

What if Princess Diana hadn't died? Diana's life and marriage were fairy tale and nightmare. Adored by millions, in her personal life she suffered heartbreak and betrayal. Within a life of privilege, she frequently felt trapped and alone. Constrained by protocol and precedent, she refused to follow the rules. Untold Story takes the life of the world's most famous woman as a point of departure, examining the past and imagining a future. The fictional princess who is the novel's heroine is at breaking point and, believing that the Establishment is plotting her assassination, she makes an irrevocable decision: to stage her own death and begin a new life under an assumed identity. After a period of intense upheaval, Lydia (as she is known) settles in small town America and establishes a fragile peace. It is threatened by thoughts of what she has lost: not the glamour and glitz of royalty but that which is most precious - her children. She is, at least, safe in the knowledge - having altered her appearance and ten years after her 'death' - that her secret will never be uncovered. But then a chance encounter with a member of the paparazzi robs her of that certainty. Will he recognize her? Should she flee or remain calm? Is there anyone she can trust and turn to, or will she inevitably be betrayed? Untold Story is a novel about family and friendship, intrigue and obsession, the meaning of identity, and the peculiar calamity of fame.

Tras el glamour y el lujo de una vida de cuentode hadas, se esconde una historia de pesadilla.Una princesa descubre que la quieren asesinary desaparece en extrañas circunstancias. Los periódicos aseguran que ha muerto. Otros que ha sido asesinada. Pero mas alla de las absurdas teorias, un pueblo norteamericano parece guardarel secreto de lo que habia sucedido en realidad.Se trata de la historia de una huida de la celebridad y la posibilidad de una segunda oportunidad.

Still in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed man who is twenty years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English, and is forced to depend on her husband. But unlike him she is practical and wise, and befriends a fellow Asian girl Razia, who helps her understand the strange ways of her adopted new British home. Nazneen keeps in touch with her sister Hasina back in the village. But the rebellious Hasina has kicked against cultural tradition and run off in a 'love marriage' with the man of her dreams. When he suddenly turns violent, she is forced into the degrading job of garment girl in a cloth factory. Confined in her flat by tradition and family duty, Nazneen also sews furiously for a living, shut away with her buttons and linings - until the radical Karim steps unexpectedly into her life. On a background of racial conflict and tension, they embark on a love affair that forces Nazneen finally to take control of her fate. Strikingly imagined, gracious and funny, this novel is at once epic and intimate.Exploring the role of Fate in our lives - those who accept it; those who defy it - it traces the extraordinary transformation of an Asian girl, from cautious and shy to bold and dignified woman.

Still in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed man who is twenty years older. Away from the mud and heat of her Bangladeshi village, home is now a cramped flat in a high-rise block in London's East End. Nazneen knows not a word of English, and is forced to depend on her husband. But unlike him she is practical and wise, and befriends a fellow Asian girl Razia, who helps her understand the strange ways of her adopted new British home. Nazneen keeps in touch with her sister Hasina back in the village. But the rebellious Hasina has kicked against cultural tradition and run off in a 'love marriage' with the man of her dreams.

Un lugar de presagios y esperanzas. Una encrucijada de destinos. Y el regreso de un hombre a quien todos están esperando. Mamarrosa es un pequeño pueblo imaginario de la región portuguesa del Alentejo. Bajo las placidas vidas de las gentes del lugar subyacen deseos y frustraciones, amores prohibidos, envidias, sueños de mejora, añoranzas del pasado... Todos ellos estan pendientes de la vuelta de un vecino, una enigmatica celebridad local, que representa la posibilidad de prosperidad economica y quizas de una nueva vida. Con su llegada, despertaran tambien viejas rencillas y rivalidades. Pero ese hijo prodigo les dejara un sorprendente mensaje. Monica Ali, envuelta por la belleza de un paisaje evocador, dibuja un mosaico de historias intensas y cargadas de humanidad. Su minuciosa y sensible mirada, que va acercandose lentamente, nos permite vislumbrar las profundidades del alma humana. Gentes apegadas a sus origenes, atrapadas por sus destinos, en fuga o en eterna busqueda recorren esta novela de personajes inolvidables. Con su prosa agil y su aguda mirada sobre el interior de este conjunto de personajes ferozmente mezclados, Azul Alentejo establece definitivamente que Monica Ali es un talento literario de primer nivel. Entertainment Weekly

A restaurant kitchen is a functional substitute for hell. Flames leap, plates flyknives and fingers, too. They're also the default place immigrants, legal and otherwise, find work. At London's Imperial Hotel, the setting for Monica Ali's In the Kitchen, nobody speaks the same language and everybody is underpaid. Ali, acclaimed author of Brick Lane, nails the killer heat, killer fights and lethal grease buildup, all of it supervised by a simmering culinary Heathcliff, Gabriel Lightfoot, executive chef.Lightfoot dropped out of school at 16 to begin paying his kitchen dues, working crazy hours with crazy people while studying food chemistry and Brillat-Savarin. Along the way, he picked up scarred hands and a ravaged psyche. At 24, given his own restaurant, it went straight up his nose. Now, almost 20 years later, two wealthy Londoners have agreed to back Gabriel in a new restaurant, Lightfoot's, where he'll serve Classic French, precisely executed. Rognons de veau dijonnaise, poussin en cocotte Bonne Femme, tripes la mode de Caen. In postmodern balsamic-drenched London, Gabriel is confident traditional French is poised for a comeback. Then the naked corpse of a Ukrainian night porter is discovered in the Imperial's basement, his head in a pool of blood. There is no one to claim the body. The ripple-free effect of a human death unhinges Gabriel. He develops a voluptuous need to self-sabotage. Visual manifestations include a Dr. Strangelove arm tic, shaking limbs and violent bald-spot scratching. Gabriel cheats on his fiancee and lies to his lover. The story is told in the third person, but through Gabriel's point of view. Intimacy juggles distance: After a certain point, he could not stop himself. His desire was a foul creature that climbed on his back and wrapped its long arms around his neck.Ali is brilliant at showing loss and adaptation in a polyglot culture. Her descriptions of the changing peoplescape are fresh. But inside Gabriel's head is not the most compelling place to be. A tragic nonhero, he thinks with his one-eyed implacable foe. It does not help that a recurring dream crumbles him, and since Gabriel doesn't understand the dream, neither does the reader. It assumes an unsustainable importance. You can play Freud or you can turn the page.Ali is not plot-averse: she provides a mysterious death, a hotel sex-trade scam, a slave-labor scheme, missing money and a dying parent. Yet Lightfoot is a character in search of a motive. It's a tribute to Ali that we care. Here is a true bastard, ravaged and out of control. In the Kitchen has the thud and knock of lifeinexplicable, impenetrable, not sewn up at all. As Gabriel's lover is fond of saying: Tchh.

Opens with a mysterious death in the cellars of a smart, cosmopolitan hotel and peels back the layers of polyglot London to reveal the melting pot which exists below. Monica Ali is the author of Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Ali was voted Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.

Who ends up in the kitchen, Gabe?' 'Misfits,' he said, 'psychos, exiles, culinary artists, and people who just need a job.' In The Kitchen is Monica Ali's stunning follow up to Brick Lane. It opens with a mysterious death in the cellars of a smart, cosmopolitan hotel and over the course of the ensuing pages, peels back the layers of polyglot London to reveal the melting pot which exists below. Once again it confirms Monica Ali not only as a great modern storyteller but also an acute observer of the vagaries of a contemporary culture.

Reissue with PB edition. This exciting and deeply moving debut novel follows the tumultuous life of Nazneen from her birth in a Bangladeshi village hut, to her arranged marriage to Chanu and the subsequent move to London's Tower Hamlets. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity. Shaped -- yet ultimately not bound -- by their landscapes and memories, both sisters struggle to dream themselves out of the rules prescribed for them. Beautifully rendered and, by turns, both comic and deeply moving, Brick Lane establishes Monica Ali as one of the most exciting new voices in fiction.

A stunningly accomplished debut and already an international sensation--the story of one outsider''s quest to find her voice. What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life. It was mantra, fettle, and challenge.

Monica Ali's gorgeous first novel is the deeply moving story of one woman, Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and transported to London at age eighteen to enter into an arranged marriage. Already hailed by the London Observer as "one of the most significant British novelists of her generation," Ali has written a stunningly accomplished debut about one outsider's quest to find her voice. What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life. It was mantra, fettle, and challenge. Nazneen's inauspicious entry into the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu, a man old enough to be her father. Nazneen moves to London and, for years, keeps house, cares for her husband, and bears children, just as a girl from the village is supposed to do. But gradually she is transformed by her experience, and begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. Motherhood is a catalyst -- Nazneen's daughters chafe against their father's traditions and pride -- and to her own amazement, Nazneen falls in love with a young man in the community. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters, and her new world. While Nazneen journeys along her path of self-realization, her sister, Hasina, rushes headlong at her life, first making a "love marriage," then fleeing her violent husband. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity. Shaped, yet not bound, by their landscapes and memories, both sisters struggle to dream -- and live -- beyond the rules prescribed for them. Vivid, profoundly humane, and beautifully rendered, Brick Lane captures a world at once unimaginable and achingly familiar. And it establishes Monica Ali as a thrilling new voice in fiction. As Kirkus Reviews said, "She is one of those dangerous writers who see everything."

Monica Ali no ha publicado nunca, pero ya es famosa. El mundo editorial lleva hablando de ella 18 meses intrigados sobre el hecho de que su contrato se haya cerrado sólo con la lectura de algunos capitulos. En enero fue lanzada hacia la primera linea gracias a que Granta lo incluyo en su lista de mejores autores jovenes despues de ver el manuscrito de su primera novela Siete mares, trece rios. , ciertamente el tipo de publicidad anticipada fantastica pero que puede llevar a temer ciertas criticas con la aparicion del libro. Ahora Monica esta en una dificil posicion. La publicacion de esta primera novela es un acontecimiento. Siete mares, trece rios, puede ser la primera novela de Ali, pero esta escrita con una sabiduria y una habilidad que pocos autores logran en el curso de toda una vida.

Alentejo Blue is the story of the Portuguese village of Mamarrosa told through the lives of those who live there and those who are passing through - children and old men, expatriates of all ages, tourists and locals. For some, such as Teresa, a beautiful, dreamy village girl, it is a place from which to escape; for others - the dysfunctional Potts family - it is a way of running from trouble (but not eluding it). Vasco, a cafe owner who has never recovered from the death of his American wife, clings to a notion that his years in America make him superior to the other villagers. One English tourist makes Mamarrosa the subject of her fantasy of a new life, while for her compatriots, a young engaged couple, Mamarrosa is where their dreams finally fall apart. At the book''s opening an old man reflects on his long and troubled life in this beautiful and seemingly tranquil setting, and anticipates the return of Marco Afonso Rodrigues, the prodigal son of the village and a symbol of this now fast-changing world.This homecoming continues as a subject of much speculation, and when Marco Afonso Rodrigues does finally appear, villagers, tourists and expatriates are brought together and jealousies, passions and disappointments collide.