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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. 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. 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.
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