Beauty

"Captures the raw humanity of inner city life with extraordinary authenticity." Costa Judges 2009 "Brilliantly plays out a comedy of conflicting cultural and class expectations." Financial Times"

This title is a winner of the Costa First Novel Award. Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having shocked her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Now she is forced onto the jobseekers' treadmill. Her fractious encounters with officialdom and passers-by in the city streets place her at the mercy of many unlikely helpers. But it's with honesty and compassion that Beauty moves ever closer towards resolving her dilemma of family duty and personal destiny. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed.