After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiance in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but in a squalid attic above a Bangladeshi sweatshop on London`s Brick Lane. A grimy skylight provided the only window on their new world: a filthy, noisy street where drug dealers & prostitutes peddled their wares & tramps urinated on the pavements. At night, traffic lights lit up the ceiling & police sirens wailed into the early hours. Yet, as Hall got to know Brick Lane, he discovered beneath its unlovely surface an inner world where immigrants & asylum seekers struggle to better themselves & dream of escape. Salaam Brick Lane is a journey of discovery by an outsider in his own native city. It offers an explicit glimpse of the underbelly of London`s most infamous quarter, the real-life world of Monica Ali`s bestselling novel.