Salaam Brick Lane

By: Tarquin Hall

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Paperback | 24 April 2006 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
290 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
1.9 x 12.9 x 20

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After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiance in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but in a squalid attic above a Bangladeshi sweatshop on London's Brick Lane. A grimy skylight provided the only window on their new world: a filthy, noisy street where drug dealers and prostitutes peddled their wares and tramps urinated on the pavements. At night, traffic lights lit up the ceiling and police sirens wailed into the early hours.

Yet, as Hall got to know Brick Lane, he discovered beneath its unlovely surface an inner world where immigrants and asylum seekers struggle to better themselves and dream of escape. Salaam Brick Lane is a journey of discovery by an outsider in his own native city. It offers an explicit glimpse of the underbelly of London's most infamous quarter, the real-life world of Monica Ali's bestselling novel.

Industry Reviews

Well-written without mawkish pieties. - Saga Magazine

'Charming, brilliant, affectionate and quietly impassioned ... it manages to be balanced, humane and life-affirming. I hope it sells out faster than cases of Chalky's "Coat de Roen"'. - Guardian

Tarquin Hall is right at the heart of what he writes about . . . Hall's new friends spring brilliantly to life off the page . . . it's hard to imagine a more moving or more telling record of lives on the edge - Caroline Gascoigne, Sunday Times

Amused and amusing, this is a refreshing addition to the accounts being offered of the area. - Stratford Recorder

Forthright and funny - Daily Telegraph

Fascinating and funny - Canterbury, Herne Bay, Whitstable & Faversham Focu

Powerful - Kent Messenger

I was absolutely riveted. It's funny, enlightening and very moving . . . I'm recommending it to all my friends just because it's such a good read. - Kate Fox, author of Watching the English

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