Monica Ali has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Brick Lane.
Brick Lane
Summary
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world. While Nanzeen journeys along her path of self-realization, her sister, Hasina, rushes headlong at her life. Woven through the novel, Hasina's letters from Dhaka recount a world of overwhelming adversity. Shaped, yet not bound, by their landscapes and memories, both sisters struggle to dream, and live, beyond the rules prescribed for them.
©2003 Monica Ali (P)2003 HighBridge Company
Untold Story
Summary
When Princess Diana died in Paris's Alma tunnel, she was 37 years old. Had she lived, she would turn 50 on July 1, 2011. Who would the beloved icon be if she were alive today? What would she be doing? And where? One of the most versatile and bold writers of our time, Monica Ali has imagined a different fate for Diana in her spectacular new novel, Untold Story. Diana's life and marriage were both fairytale and nightmare rolled into one. Adored by millions, she suffered rejection, heartbreak, and betrayal. Surrounded by glamour and glitz and the constant attention of the press, she fought to carve a meaningful role for herself in helping the needy and dispossessed. The contradictions and pressures of her situation fueled her increasingly reckless behavior, but her stature and her connection with her public never ceased to grow. If Diana had lived, would she ever have found peace and happiness, or would the curse of fame always have been too great? Fast forward a decade after the (averted) Paris tragedy, and an Englishwoman named Lydia is living in a small, nondescript town somewhere in the American Midwest. She has a circle of friends: one owns a dress shop; one is a Realtor; another is a frenzied stay-at-home mom. Lydia volunteers at an animal shelter, and swims a lot. Her lover, who adores her, feels she won't let him know her. Who is she? Untold Story is about the cost of celebrity, the meaning of identity, and the possibility - or impossibility - of reinventing a life. Ali's fictional princess is beautiful, intrepid, and resourceful, and has established a fragile peace. And then the past threatens to destroy her new life. Ali has created a riveting novel inspired by the cultural icon she calls "a gorgeous bundle of trouble."
©2011 Monica Ali (P)2011 Simon & Schuster
Alentejo Blue
Summary
Monica Ali's stunning second book is a collection of stories, set in the Alentejo province of Portugal, linked by characters and a vivid sense of place and time. Teresa, a beautiful young girl from the village, is supposed to marry a suitable man from the same community, but she wants to see the world. Vasco is a café owner who is losing business to the new Internet café down the road. The unseemly, dysfunctional, but strangely riveting Pottses are a family of ex-patriots, trying to cobble a life together, living at odds with one another until they run into trouble from the outside. We also meet several English tourists, including a young couple engaged to be married and confronting each other's weaknesses and idiosyncrasies for the first time, and an older woman imagining a new life while fantasizing about never returning home.
©2006 Monica Ali (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
In the Kitchen
Summary
Celebrated author Monica Ali was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was named one of the 20 best young British novelists by Granta. In the Kitchen stars Gabe Lightfoot, an executive chef overseeing an eclectic kitchen staff - and dealing with a dead porter and an intriguing young lady from Belarus.
©2009 Monica Ali (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC