At the tender age of eigteeen, Nazneen's life is turned upseide down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village for a block of flat in London's East End. In this new world, where poor people can be fat and even dogs go on diets, she struggles to make sense of her existence - and to do her duty to her husband. man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliance.

But Nazneen submits, as she must, to Fate and dévotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demons of discontent. Until she becomes aware of a Young radical, Karim.

Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazneen to take control of her life ...