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Monica Ali

Headshot of Monica Ali

Monica Ali is novelist, best known for Brick Lane, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2003

April 2024

  • Women's prize for fiction 2024 judges: (from left) Indira Varma; Anna Whitehouse; Monica Ali; Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Laura Dockrill.

    ‘Six spellbinding and thought-provoking novels’: why we chose the Women’s prize for fiction shortlist

    From Sri Lanka to New South Wales and Shanghai, these wide-ranging stories are united by a compelling focus on women’s experience

December 2023

  • Illustration: R Fresson

    double quotation markWould I use AI to write my novels? I’d get better results from a monkey with an iPhone

    Monica Ali
    I asked ChatGPT to improve my latest novel and lost no sleep over the results. But I do worry about diverse voices being crowded out, says novelist Monica Ali

December 2022

  • Monica Ali

    My new year resolution
    ‘I will reflect on my own death – and try to conquer my fears’: the thing I’ll do differently in 2023

    I don’t want to be mawkish or indulgent. But I want to consider my mortality in order to live well in the years I have left

July 2022

  • Illustration by Neil Webb.

    Summer reading: the 30 best holiday reads – chosen by authors and critics

    Novelists including Johny Pitts, Monica Ali and Nina Stibbe – plus Observer critics – on their essential holiday books

March 2022

  • Monica Ali.

    The books of my life
    Monica Ali: ‘I can’t imagine life without Tolstoy and Austen’

    The novelist on George Orwell’s doublespeak, the psychology of addiction, and the unbearable darkness of Émile Zola

February 2018

  • Monica Ali and her two children in the 00s.

    Women's rights: 100 revolutionary years
    Monica Ali on feminism in the 2000s: ‘I hadn’t truly considered the impact of children’

    The Brick Lane novelist’s student dreams of imminent gender equality had drowned in a sea of nappies, but then she re-engaged with feminism’s new individualism

December 2017

  • 1995, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE<br>JENNIFER EHLE &amp; COLIN FIRTH Character(s): Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy Television ‘PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’ (1995) Directed By SIMON LANGTON 24 September 1995 SSV86161 Allstar/BBC (TV-Minisierie, UK 1995) / Literaturverfilmung (based on the book by Jane Austen) **WARNING** This Photograph is for editorial use only and is the copyright of BBC and/or the Photographer assigned by the TV or Production Company &amp; can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above TV Programme. A Mandatory Credit To BBC is required. The Photographer should also be credited when known. No commercial use can be granted without written authority from the TV Company.

    From Jane Austen to haunting memoirs: books to open your eyes to inequality

    In the second part of our series, we asked Sarah Perry, Jeffrey Sachs, Sebastian Barry, Monica Ali, Richard Wilkinson, Julian Baggini, Kate Pickett and Afua Hirsch to tell us which titles helped shape their views on inequality

November 2016

  • From Frantz Fanon to Li Ruzhen, international authors deserve more attention from universities.

    Students in a postcolonial world
    The non-western books that every student should read

    Leading authors pick international classics that should be on every students’ bookshelves, but are often neglected by universities

March 2015

  • Hayley Pierce, St Giles Trust St Giles Trust

    The reality of Chris Grayling’s probation revolution – ‘£46 goes nowhere’

    For a released inmate, the first £10 goes on travel. Then what? As probation is privatised and rehabilitation projects lose funding, Monica Ali gets a glimpse of the test facing one woman as she walks through the prison gates

April 2011

  • Kate Middleton

    double quotation markLet Kate Middleton be a princess for our times

    Monica Ali
    Monica Ali: Snide judgments meted out to Prince William's bride lay bare the double standards of our 'equal society'

March 2011

  • PRINCESS DIANA

    Royal rebel: the legacy of Diana

    Monica Ali's new novel was inspired by Diana. Here she pays tribute to a 'fascinating, flawed' woman who stood up to the monarchy's hypocrisy and changed Britain forever

April 2009

  • My other life
    My other life: Monica Ali

    Writers reveal their fantasy careers

October 2008

  • The Saturday poem
    The Olden Days by Monica Ali

  • The week in books
    The week in books

October 2006

  • Letter from Uganda

    In the first of a joint Observer/Oxfam series, Brick Lane author Monica Ali travels to the refugee camps of northern Uganda to meet a people who have come through war to find a fragile peace.

May 2006

  • After Woolf

    In the 1930s, wandering London for a series of magazine articles, Virginia Woolf found a city alive with bustling activity and excitement. Monica Ali takes a 21st-century stroll in her footsteps - and finds the capital humming to a different tune.

June 2003

  • Where I'm coming from

    As a child she hid from the Pakistani army, then fled to Britain with her English mother. But is Monica Ali's colourful life story the basis for her acclaimed first novel? Well, sort of...

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