Brick Lane

This is the protagonist of the novel who undergoes a remarkable transformation sourced in her evolving awareness of the connections between mind and body. Born in 1967 in an East Pakistan village before the Bangladesh Liberation, she is transported to London at the age of 18 by way of a marriage arranged by her father, the second wealthiest man in her village. She was born with a death rattle and her parents left her survival to fate. Her ultimate survival gave her a guiding sense of endurance, reinforced by her fatalistic mother, as well as her own quiet and stoic character. While Nazneen was reared to be a passive and obedient Muslim woman, this predetermined course is to be challenged in her new London environment. When she has to survive in a foreign culture, she learns to forge her fate through self-mastery. This inner achievement is reflected in her balance between the two cultures, that of her strict Muslim upbringing and that of the secular Western existence of her London-born daughters and lover. As she evolves, she learns to love her husband as a separate being by compassionately approaching him as a man caught between two cultures.