The Hindu : Monica Ali on Booker Prize list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 17, 2003

International

International

Monica Ali on Booker Prize list

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON AUG. 16. The race for this year's Booker Prize has started with the release of a long-list of 23 books including the British Asian writer, Monica Ali's first novel Brick Lane, a sensitive portrayal of Britain's Bangladeshi community through the eyes of a young woman from a village in Mymensingh who comes to live in London's East End after her marriage to a struggling immigrant from her country. The Oxford-educated Ali, who shot into prominence after she was included in Granta magazine's list of Britain's "Young Best Novelists'' earlier this year, has resisted attempts to put her into a `box' as an ethnic writer and her publishers caused quite a row when they told a leading newspaper that they would rather have a non-Asian journalist interview her.

Ms. Ali's father was Bangladeshi and mother English, and she grew up in the predominantly Bangladeshi area of Tower Hamlets in East London.

Ms. Ali is among a host of new writers on the long-list, which will be pared down to a shortlist of six before a winner is picked up for the £50,000 prize to be given on October 14.But, predictably, there are also several big-hitters on the list including the perpetually contentious Martin Amis whose novel Yellow Dog has made it despite hostile reviews. Unlike some of his other contemporaries such as Salman Rushdie, Mr. Amis has never won a Booker and was shortlisted only once — for Time's Arrow in 1991. Previous Booker winners, who are again in the running, include Margaret Atwood for Oryx and Crake; J.M.Coetzee for Elizabeth Costell; and Graham Swift for The Light of Day. Other well-known contenders are Caryl Phillips, Jonathan Raban, Francis King, Shena Mackay, Tim Parks and Melvyn Bragg.

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