Anita and Me — Meera Syal

The debut novel from the award winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach The story of nine year old Meena growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington It s 1972 Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington the jewel of the Black Country She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village her daily struggle for independence is different from most She wants fishfingers and chips not chapati and dhal she wants an English Christmas not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities but more than anything she wants to roam the backyards of working class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang Blonde cool aloof outrageous and sassy Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be Meena wheedles her way into Anita s life but the arrival of a baby brother teenage hormones impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita s salad days sour Anita and Me paints a comic poignant compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares power cuts glam rock decimalisation and Ted Heath It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies a childhood caught between two cultures each on the brink of change

The debut novel from the award winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach The story of nine year old Meena growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington It s 1972 Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington the jewel of the Black Country She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village her daily struggle for independence is different from most She wants fishfingers and chips not chapati and dhal she wants an English Christmas not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities but more than anything she wants to roam the backyards of working class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang Blonde cool aloof outrageous and sassy Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be Meena wheedles her way into Anita s life but the arrival of a baby brother teenage hormones impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita s salad days sour Anita and Me paints a comic poignant compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares power cuts glam rock decimalisation and Ted Heath It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies a childhood caught between two cultures each on the brink of change

The story of nine year old Meena the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the Midlands mining village of Tollington The novel provides a vision of British childhood in the 1960s a childhood caught between two cultures each on the brink of enormous change Tanıtım Bülteninden