9. Brick Lane, by Monica Ali

Ali's novel, published in 2003, was a book club pick for the summer. I had never heard of the novel, but was aware of Ali through comparison with Zadie Smith, who also published a novel about Bengali transplants in modern Britain. Ali's writing varies strongly from Smith's however; whereas Smith is out to amaze with her dazzling prose, Ali aims for a slow burn. Telling the story of Nazneen, who moves to Great Britain at the behest of her self-proclaimed brilliant husband, Ali paints a beautiful portrait of identity and assimilation. In trying to resist the charms of political militant Karim, while simultaneously accepting that her fate has already been written out for her, Nazneen discovers a world she did not previously know she could grow to love. And while this discovery sometimes comes across as pure cheese ("Icey-skating"), Ali deeply humanizes her characters, characters that could easily have become cliches in the hands of a lesser writer. Her Chanu, a misguided failure of a man both as a husband and a father, stays with the reader long after the book's end. His faults connect him with readers in ways that not many would admit. Skip the well-intended movie and go straight to the source.