...then here are two highly-praised novels set in multi-cultural London
One of the most lauded fictional debuts of recent years, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel which deals with friendship, love war, three cultures, and three families over three generations. Much of the novel is set in a scrubby North London borough, home to the book’s two unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal who have been best friends ever since they met in the Second World War. With its bold characters and big questions, White Teeth positively teems with exuberance.
And with its gritty Tower Hamlets setting, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane deals cogently with issues of love, cultural difference and the human spirit. At the heart of the novel is the story of Nazneen, a teenager forced to leave her Bangladeshi village to enter into an arranged marriage with a man much holder than her. She finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block speaking no English and totally dependent on her husband. But it becomes apparent that of the two she is the real survivor.
