Abstract
This chapter examines the poetics and politics of space in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane with respect to characterization, themes, and literary form. In particular, an understanding of space is crucial to the novel’s narrative of empowerment for its central character, Nazneen, a Bangladeshi immigrant to London in the 1980s. Extending established postcolonial interpretations of the novel, the essay examines Ali’s text with respect to a number of critical concepts including psychogeography, heterotopias, gentrification, postcolonial models of center/periphery, and gender, drawing on theoretical perspectives from Guy Debord, Gaston Bachelard, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and Raymond Williams. The particular spaces examined include the council flat and its constituent rooms, the housing estate, the city, the village, and the physical and cultural site of the body.
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Bentley, N. (2018). “Why Should You Go Out?”: Encountering the City in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. In: Michael, M. (eds) Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City. Literary Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89728-8_2
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