"Love is not an easy thing It's both the disease and the medicine, a character says in Manish Chauhan's meditation on modern love. This poignant and perceptive coming-of-age story, about two strangers who become star-crossed lovers, is a powerful portrait of the lived realities of immigrants in Britain, and of love as home, hope and destiny. Newly arrived in England following an arranged marriage with British-Indian Rajiv, Mira feels increasingly out of place as she finds out that Rajiv holds secrets and loves someone else."
"On the eponymous Belgrave Road in Leicester, entire days go by without sight of an English person, and Mira feels disappointed that England wasn't as foreign or as mysterious as she had hoped. She takes English classes, finds companionship in her mother-in-law and fills her days with household chores, but nothing shifts her deep loneliness. Tahliil is an asylum seeker from Somalia, who, together with his sister, Sumayya, joins their mother in Leicester."
Mira arrives in England after an arranged marriage to British-Indian Rajiv and soon discovers Rajiv loves someone else and keeps painful secrets. She lives on Belgrave Road in Leicester, where few English neighbours appear, studies English, befriends her mother-in-law, and occupies herself with household chores while struggling with deep loneliness. Tahliil arrives from Somalia as an asylum seeker, works as a carer and in a cash-and-carry while awaiting a Home Office decision, and feels untethered. Mira and Tahliil meet when she works at a neighbouring sweet shop and develop a fragile, uncertain love amid precarious futures.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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