ABSTRACT
Diran Adebayo talks with Monica Ali, who was hailed by the press as the
‘new Zadie Smith’ when her first novel, Brick Lane, was published in
2003. In this interview Monica Ali discusses the experience of writing her
first novel. Adebayo and Ali were students together at Oxford; however,
their views on the craft of writing as well as the position of the mixed-race
or black writer in Britain differ considerably. Adebayo began his career as
a journalist for the Voice newspaper before writing Some Kind of Black
(which won the Saga Prize) in 1996. His second novel, My Once Upon A
Time, appeared in 2000. Ali is currently working on a new novel; Adebayo
is writing a screenplay, Burnt, for Film Four and a novel, The Ballad of
Dizzy and Miss P.
