Promotional Information

The brilliant new novel from the bestselling author of Brick Lane.

About the Author

Monica Ali is one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists of the decade, Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards and has been nominated for most of the major literary prizes in Britain.

Her first novel, Brick Lane, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize for political writing and the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Reviews

A novel of quiet pleasures, with a perplexed hero who always rings true.
*Mail on Sunday*

Her descriptions of Gabe's disassociated states are excellent...this is an ambitious book from a writer not content to revisit familiar territory...Serious and intelligent.
*Independent*

Ali's strengths lie in a cool authorial distance, and a passion for detail
*The Times*

A compelling story..Ali is second to none when it comes to capturing modes of speech...Monica Ali is shaping up to be a fine novelist
*Sunday Express*

The kitchen of the title is the Imperial Hotel in central London, and Ali's dazzling accounts of its manic goings-on make the chef Anthony Bourdain's gory memoir, Kitchen Confidential, seem as genteel as Fanny Cradock.
*Sunday Times*

A bold novel from an intelligent writer who is determined to explore difficult relationships and uncomfortable conditions in 21st-century Britain.
*Independent on Sunday*

Ali has chosen a workplace that, though familliar through television shows, remains fascinating, and the kitchen scenes are superb...Ali's prose is often beautiful and there are flashes of Brick Lane's buoyant comedy
*Observer*

Few writers these days can strip characters to their very souls like Ali does
*Entertainment Weekly*

In the Kitchen works best as a novel about work. Ali has done her homework on restaurant kitchens and weaving, and uses both as sustained metaphors for contrasting visions of society: the cohesive social fabric nostalgically remembered by Gabe's father and his peers, and the melting pot of Gabe's kitchen in the contemporary world of deregulated labour.
*Guardian*

Ali lulls us into thinking this will be a conventional enough murder mystery. But to the familiar tale of life in the big city spinning out of control, she brings what Orwell called the "power of facing unpleasant facts" dissecting the body politic with acuity and humour - and confronting unpalatable truths about our selfishness and complicity
*Times Literary Supplement*

From the immigrant world of East End London in Brick Lane, shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize, Ali moves into the culinary world of a once posh London hotel restaurant, again capturing the multicultural layers of modern London. Gabriel Lightfoot, executive chef for the Imperial Hotel, dreams of owning his own restaurant but must first contend with the UN task force that is his kitchen crew. His life becomes even more complicated when the body of a Hungarian porter is found dead in a storeroom. Still, restaurant troubles are nothing when compared with his personal life. His girlfriend is pressuring him about marriage, unaware that he's sleeping with a Russian kitchen girl, and his ever-difficult father is dying of cancer. Gabe's two stories entwine, the pressure mounts, and, finally, he loses his bearings. With sometimes sly humor, Ali deftly sheds light on the irony of struggling in a land with abundant opportunities. For all fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/09.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa County P.L., Grand Junction, CO Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

A novel of quiet pleasures, with a perplexed hero who always rings true. * Mail on Sunday *
Her descriptions of Gabe's disassociated states are excellent...this is an ambitious book from a writer not content to revisit familiar territory...Serious and intelligent. * Independent *
Ali's strengths lie in a cool authorial distance, and a passion for detail * The Times *
A compelling story..Ali is second to none when it comes to capturing modes of speech...Monica Ali is shaping up to be a fine novelist * Sunday Express *
The kitchen of the title is the Imperial Hotel in central London, and Ali's dazzling accounts of its manic goings-on make the chef Anthony Bourdain's gory memoir, Kitchen Confidential, seem as genteel as Fanny Cradock. * Sunday Times *