Bøker av Monica Ali

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE'Written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime' Sunday TimesStill in her teenage years, Nazneen finds herself in an arranged marriage with a disappointed older man.

BITCH. SCOLD. HARRIDAN.For centuries past, and all across the worldDRAGON. TIGRESS. SHE-DEVIL.There are words for a certain kind of womanFURY. HARPY. SPITFIRE.Words that raise our hackles, fire up our bloodHUSSY. SIREN. VIXEN.Words that tell a storyIn this blazing cauldron of a book, the boldest writers of our day take up these words and take up their pen, celebrating fifty years of Virago.

"Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father) and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose domineering mother, Helen, is a famous feminist. Though both Yasmin's parents and Joe's mother approve of the marriage, the cultural gulf between them is vast as, it turns out, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe. The novel opens as Yasmin, her parents and her brother pile into their car, packed with Indian food prepared by Yasmin's mother, to go to dinner to meet Joe's mother in her elegant townhouse in one of London's poshest neighborhoods. Contrary to all of Yasmin's fears, her unsophisticated and somewhat flamboyant mother is embraced and celebrated by Helen and her friends. Many complications ensue when Yasmin discovers that Joe has had an affair with a co-worker, and Yasmin's ne'er do well brother is banished from the house by her father, and Yasmin's mother moves to Helen's house in protest. Love Marriage is a story of emotionally fraught self-discovery and how the secrets people keep hidden affect their most intimate relationships. Joe hides the exact nature of his promiscuous past; Yasmin's brother and mother keep a monumental secret from their father; Yasmin has a wildly erotic affair of her own; and the story of her parents' love marriage proves to be a cover-up for a dark, tragic history. In the wake of extreme upheaval, Yasmin finds herself, and her life, transformed"--

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Brick Lane, a Level 6 Reader, is B1+ in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future continuous, reported questions, third conditional, was going to and ellipsis. A small number of illustrations support the text.When Nazneen is 18, she marries a much older man and moves from Bangladesh to England to be with her husband. But Brick Lane in London is very different from Nazneen's village, and she speaks no English. Nazneen must try to look after her family and get used to a new, and very strange, country.Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

With nationalism and the far right on the rise across Europe and North America, there has never been a more important moment to face up to what we, in Britain, are doing to those who seek sanctuary. Still the UK detains people indefinitely under immigration rules. Bail hearings go unrecorded, people are picked up without notice, individuals feel abandoned in detention centres with no way of knowing when they will be released. In Refugee Tales III we read the stories of people who have been through this process, many of whom have yet to see their cases resolved and who live in fear that at any moment they might be detained again. Poets, novelists and writers have once again collaborated with people who have experienced detention, their tales appearing alongside first-hand accounts by people who themselves have been detained. What we hear in these stories are the realities of the hostile environment, the human costs of a system that disregards rights, that denies freedoms and suspends lives.

At the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, chef Gabriel Lightfoot is trying to run a tight kitchen. Despite the pressure, his hard work looks set to pay off. Until the discovery of a porter's dead body in the kitchen appears to tip the scales. In The Kitchen is Monica Ali's stunning follow up to Brick Lane.