Her debut novel, Brick Lane, turned Monica Ali into an overnight sensation, and shed light on to life on one of London’s best-known thoroughfares.
Now, seven years after the book set among the Bangladeshi community of the East End, Ali has chosen a vastly different subject for her latest work — a page-turner inspired by Princess Diana.
It is, I can reveal, a ‘what if’ story. What if the tragedy in the Paris tunnel in 1997 never happened and she were still alive today? Where would she be and what would she be doing?
Ali, 43, delivered the first draft to her publishers, Transworld, in July last year. It is now in the final stages of editing, with publication planned for the end of March.
The title is Untold Story, and it tells of a fictional princess who, like Diana, has a life that is both a fairy tale and a nightmare. Adored by millions, in her personal life she suffers heartbreak and betrayal, and feels trapped and alone.
Read more at The Daily Mail.
For those of us who grew up as part of a Western society and have never known anything else, Brick Lane tells the story of a woman who must reconcile living in Western society with her own cultural beliefs. Nazneen is not representative of a whole country, as some have protested, but she is representative of women who come from an isolated area and who learn to live in a culture that is very different from the one in which they grew up. Brick Lane is a story not just of Nazneen, who comes to London from Bangladesh with her husband, but also that of her sister Hasina, who remains in Bangladesh.
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