The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Beauty

Beauty

by RaphaelSelbourne (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2009

    $3.28
Synopsis

Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having disgraced her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Forced onto the jobseeker's treadmill and under extreme domestic pressure, she cracks and runs away. Her encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, and strangers in the city streets, complicated by the restrictions and comfort of her language and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly, Staffordshire bull terrier-breeding exoffender, and Peter, a middle-class underachiever on the rebound from a bitter relationship. With determination and good humour, Beauty moves ever closer to making her choice between family duty and personal freedom. All the while, however, her brothers are searching for her across town. Can she make the choice herself, before she's forced to? A sharply rendered, compassionate and challenging portrait of a fragmented, multicultural urban England.

$3.28

Save:$6.83 (68%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 329
 Edition: Main
 Publisher: Tindal Street
Published: 01 Sep 2009
ISBN 10: 0955647673
ISBN 13: 9780955647673
Book Overview: The girl was fagool, crazy, and refusing to marry ...
 Prizes: Winner of Costa First Novel Award 2009.

Media Reviews
Selbourne brilliantly plays out a comedy of conflicting cultural and class expectations, repeatedly confounding reader's expectations. Through Beauty herself, he gives the tale of the innocent abroad an original twist * Financial Times *
Selbourne writes convincingly both of Beauty's Bengali household and Mark's working-class world of casual sex, pubs and hard manual labour. This first novel is also very funny * Independent *
Selbourne uses Beauty's naive but moral vision to show us our own excesses of indifference, ugliness, drunkenness, sex consumption and much besides. Black and white it isn't, despite the mixed race context * Times *
Shocking, explosive and tender - I could not put it down * Maggie Gee *
Author Bio
Raphael Selbourne moved to Wolverhampton after many years in Italy and has lived there for the last six years. Here he has worked with the long-term unemployed and socially disadvantaged, and his experience and friendships with Bangladeshis in Wolverhampton inspired him to write this book.