Salaam Brick Lane

by Tarquin Hall

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Book cover for Salaam Brick Lane

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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.

  • ISBN10 0719565561
  • ISBN13 9780719565564
  • Publish Date 24 April 2006 (first published 11 April 2005)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Out of Print 24 August 2023
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher John Murray Press
  • Imprint John Murray Publishers Ltd
  • Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
  • Pages 288
  • Language English