The Desmond Elliott Prize is an annual award for a first novel written
in English and published in the UK. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the
prize is named after the literary agent and publisher, Desmond Elliott.
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Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2009.
Costa Book Awards 2009 Judges' comment: "Captures the raw humanity of inner city life with extraordinary authenticity."
A Bangladeshi girl has fled an abusive arranged marriage and then finds she needs to escape the restrictions of her family, back home in England, and start out on her own. Along the way she meets characters who both surprise and shock. A totally engrossing book - touching, funny and sad.
Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back inEngland having disgraced her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Forced ontothe 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 themercy 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 choicebetween family duty and personal freedom. All the while, however, her brothers aresearching 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, multiculturalurban England.
