Salaam Brick Lane

by Tarquin Hall
 
Amin says "A British travel writer, returns to raise his family in the East End of London. In the bustling streets, he finds a neighbourhood in heady flux. Far from falling into the role of privileged voyeur, Hall provides a comprehensive and honest account on a city struggling with modernity and on the cusp of gentrification. Anyone and everyone will be riveted by this human story of what we leave behind, who we become and where we're go.”
 
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.
 
Format: Paperback