Dibs

Monica Ali’s Brick Lane was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize and widely hailed by critics, but now residents of London’s real Brick Lane neighborhood are protesting local production of the film version, calling the novel racist, according to the Guardian. Ruby Films’ adaptation is already underway in a London studio, but a petition is circulating in the largely Bangladeshi Brick Lane area urging — as quoted in the Guardian — “all right-thinking people to join … in preventing this attack on good social, ethical standard and idea.” Heading the protest “from his sweetshop armed with three mobile phones and an address book, the chair of the Brick Lane Traders’ Association, Abdus Salique, warned of the damage film could do to community relations. ‘Nobody can come with a camera, make a film about that book here. She [Ali] has imagined ideas about us in her head. She is not one of us, she has not lived with us, she knows nothing about us, but she has insulted us…. I’ve seen her, I’ve talked with her…. She never told us she’d write a book. Now she can’t even come to Brick Lane.’” Is that a threat? “Can’t”? According to the Guardian, Salique also claimed that neighborhood groups “prevented Monica Ali from being awarded the Booker. … ‘We stopped that.’ … Young people are getting very involved with this campaign. They will blockade the area and guard our streets. Of course, they will not do anything unless we tell them to, but I warn you they are not as peaceful as me.” Ah, the streets of London. A spokesperson from Ruby Films denied that “the book or the film was in any way racist.” But a spokesman for Tower Hamlets council, an area governing body, said that his group would “take the concerns of local residents seriously when giving permission to use the borough” for filming — and thus could keep the cameras out. The novel has faced other criticism; on its Amazon page many readers call it boring. “Soporific,” writes “Mr. Read-a-Lot,” for example. “A big yawn,” muses “blue kazoo.” Maybe Monica Ali “can’t” come to their neighborhoods, either.