productive cultural hybridity is commonly (and erroneously) perceived to go hand-in-glove with overtly experimental forms. The novels he looks at have much in common in terms of subject matter with Brick Lane it is thus interesting that he addresses the question of the troubled relationship of postcolonialism and realism in a subsection titled 'Ethnic Identity and Literary Form.' He argues: In the chapter 'Multicultural Personae' in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000, Dominic Head has investigated 'the hybridized cultural forms that might be produced in an evolving, and so genuinely, multicultural Britain' (156). Because it is a realist narrative with a postcolonial story, it offers an excellent opportunity to examine the relationship between the formal strategies of mimetic fiction and the historical contexts of multiculturalism and immigration. Monica Ali's 2003 novel of Bangladeshi immigrants in London, Brick Lane, has been a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic. I argue that Ali employs stereotypes as counterpoints in order to further emphasize her protagonist's final integration into contemporary British society, and that the novel might usefully be understood as a “multicultural Bildungsroman”. I argue that the major concern of the novel is not the destabilization of stereotypes but the celebration of the potential for adaptation in both individuals and societies.

Critically analysing debates which have attempted to assert that Brick Lane either propagates or ironically subverts cultural stereotypes, this article scrutinizes the valency of the kinds of “postmodern” readings of the novel which have thus far prevailed. Interestingly, literary critics who have championed the novel have not sought to deny that it employs stereotypes, but rather to emphasize its sense of knowing irony in doing so. Monica Ali's phenomenally popular debut novel Brick Lane has often been accused of reinforcing rather than challenging stereotypes of cultural otherness.

Monica ali novels