Born in Bangladesh in 1967 to a Bangladeshi father and an English mother, Monica Ali came with her parents to Britain at the age of three in 1970, as a result of the civil war. Settling in Bolton, Greater Manchester, Ali attended Bolton School, where she was academically successful, and she went on to Wadham College, Oxford, where she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Despite the similarities often drawn, such privileged beginnings have little in common with the characters of Ali’s fiction.

When Monica Ali was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, an accolade given only every ten years, and in each case to only twenty new writers, it announced an important new literary voic

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First published 13 August 2008

Citation: Upstone, Sara. "Monica Ali". The Literary Encyclopedia. 13 August 2008.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11828, accessed 21 November 2009.]