The English Harem - Couverture souple

In this hilarious, provocative and highly topical story of food, love and Islam, Anthony McCarten exposes the flaws inherent to our multicultural society, and explores the nature of racism from a startlingly original angle. Supermarket checkout girl Tracy Pringle has a very lively imagination indeed. In front of her, as she blip-blips herself into a daydream, walk past not boring housewives with screaming children or tired office clerks, but the likes of Lord Byron, Lawrence of Arabia and Princess Leia. It comes as no surprise, then, that she turns a blind eye when Her Majesty herself pops a packet of Mr Kipling's Bakewell tarts into her handbag without paying. Obviously, the management sees it differently, and Tracy is given the sack on the spot and forced to find herself another job. But nothing can prepare her for the new life that awaits her at the Taste of Persia restaurant, where she is flung headlong into a clash of cultures, languages, dinner plates, religions and a rather tricky domestic arrangement...

Anthony McCarten's debut novel, Spinners, won international acclaim, and was followed by The English Harem and the award winning Death of a Superhero, all three books being translated into many languages. McCarten has also written twelve stage plays, including the worldwide success Ladies' Night, which won France's Moliere Prize, the Meilleure Piece Comique, in 2001. Also a film-maker, he has thrice adapted his own plays or novels into feature films which he directed himself.