Monica Ali

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka in former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1967 and left with her family during the civil war. She grew up in Bolton and studied politics, philosophy and economics at Wadham College, Oxford. She worked in publishing, design and branding before having children, and started to write whenever her son and daughter ‘could be persuaded to synchronise their naps’. She is the author of three novels, Brick Lane (2003), Alentejo Blue (2006), and In The Kitchen (2009), all published by Doubleday.