IN THE KITCHEN

1. IN THE KITCHEN Monica Ali

2. MONICA ALI Monica Ali (born 20 October 1967) is a Bangladeshi-born British writer and novelist. In 2003, she was selected as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" by Granta magazine based on her debut novel, Brick Lane, published later that year. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, one of the world's foremost literary honors. She has also published three other novels: Alentejo Blue (2006) In the Kitchen (2009) Untold Story (2011).

3. Ali was born in 1967 in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, which at the time was known as East Pakistan. Her father, Hatem Ali, was a teacher who had met her British mother, Joyce, while studying in the north of England a few years earlier. Ali's mother returned to Dhaka with him, where they defied the wishes of his family—who had already selected a bride for Hatem—and married. "People came from miles around to see this white woman" Ali told in an interview for the Evening Standard about her mother's newlywed adventures.

4. Civil war broke out in East Pakistan in 1971, and this forced Ali's parents to move to England for their safety and that of their four-year-old daughter, who has vivid recollections of this period. "When the Pakistani tanks rolled into Dhaka, we used to sleep out on the balcony at night, fully clothed in case a knock came at the door” (Ali’s interview for the Independent).

5. The Ali family settled in Bolton, a city in northwest England, but several years had passed since her parents had met, and anti-Asian sentiment was on the rise in Britain. In the early 1960s, the few southwest Asian residents in England were largely professionals, such as doctors, but intervening years had brought a new influx of poorer immigrants, which raised tensions and prompted the founding of a right-wing anti-immigration party called the National Front. The family struggled on several levels, because her father had difficulty finding a job, and so her parents ran a small trinket shop for a time—and they all sensed unease from their English relatives and strangers alike. «I experienced racism» Ali told the reporter of the Evening Standard

6. Ali entered Wadham College of Oxford University and graduated with a PPE degree (the philosophy, politics, and economics course). She went to work in a small publishing house before joining a branding agency. During this period she met her future husband, a management consultant named Simon Torrance, and quit work when she became a mother. When her first child was born, Ali decided to join an online shortstory writing group. She had never tried writing fiction before, but as she told: “Quickly I felt a bit constrained by the short-story format, as though I didn't have room to breathe. There was something else that I wanted to do. And then it was a question of getting up the courage.”

7. Her mother's father died not long following the arrival of Ali's second child, her daughter Shumi. Immediately after the funeral, she and her husband went on vacation, and it was then she began writing Brick Lane, the novel that established Ali as a writer of real literary depth and dimension. The novel tells the story of Nazneen, a sensitive and intelligent woman who is obliged to move from Bangladesh to England in order to marry Chanu, an unlucky but at the same time comic and energic man. The background of their life is an ethnic universe characterised by death, debt, kidnappings, drug, the impossibility to feel at home but above all the impossibility to return to Bangladesh and forced prostitution, a topic that we also find in her no less important novel: In The Kitchen. “It’s a book about faith, hope, love and custard.”

8. Whatdoesithappen… In the Kitchen? «It’sallbitty and blurry and muddly. You know, in a proper war, or even in the Cold War, there’s a reallyclearenemy and itallmakessense, like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and you know whatyouwant the end to be, butnowwedon’thave a good story, the plot isall over the place.» (Charlie, Chapter 9, pp. 190-191) In the «Imperial Hotel»’sbasement, where the story begins, a dead man isdiscovered. He’s Yuri, an illegalimmigrantwhoworkedthereas a kitchenhand. Ourmaincharacter, Gabriel Lightfoot, the executive Chef of a multiethnicbrigade, struggles with the attempt to solve this case whileputting up Lena, anotherillegalimmigrantwhoapparentlylived with Yuri in the basement. «Every corner of the earthwasrepresentedhere. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and mostplaces in between. Oona hadtaken a new dishwasher, from Somalia or somewhereprettymuchlikethat. The otheronewasMongolian and the thirdwas from where? The Philippines? […] The room service guywasfreshly from Chile and Gabriel doubtedthathis English extendedbeyondfries and burgers…» (Chapter 6, p. 129)

9. Meanwhile… At Gabriel’s home in the fictionaltown of Blantwistle, things are notgoingwelleither: a call by hissister Jenny informshimthathisfatherTedsuffers from livercancer. • London vs Blantwistle (NorthernEngland) In Blantwistletherewereonly the Asian, or the Pakisastheywerecalledthen, maybestillwere. Theydidonly the night shiftsat the mill, were just coming out as the morningshiftwent in. Thatwas the way itwasat first. (Chapter 6, p. 129) Gabriel wishes a bright future for himself and his girlfriend Charlie: he isgoinginto business with Rolly and Fairweather, a businessman and a politicianrespectively, so as to open hisownrestaurant, «Lightfoot». As the story movesforward, everysubplotbecomes more complex and more difficult for Gabriel to face.

10. The point is: how to deal with such situations without losing control over himself? Little by little, Gabriel starts behaving oddly and aimlessly. • He wants to help Lena, but actually takes repeatedly advantage of her; he has sex with her, promises her to find her money and his «brother» Pasha, but never keeps his word; • He breaks up with Charlie after having confessed his relationship with Lena; • His father’s disease makes him reconsider his childhood and adolescence, including his relationship with his parents. He finds out that his memories do not match with reality: his mother’s madness and infidelity, his father, working in a textile factory and trying to induce little Gabe to pursue his career in that field.

11. Free Will vs Determinism «I mightnot be able to fallasleepwhen I want, butwhenI’mawake I can decide what I do, when I do it, how I do it. That’s free will. Wemakechoicesall the time. How webehaveis up to us.» (Gabriel, Chapter 18, p. 373) «How webehaveisdetermined by ourchildhood, by the accidents of birth and parentage and whathappened to usalong the way. A particularchildhoodstripsus of certainchoices, propelsus in certaindirections. […] Freud’staughtusthatweneed to examine a person’spast in order to understandhisbehaviourtoday.» (Nikolai, formerly a doctor in USSR) (Chapter 18, pp. 373-374)

12. Gabriel sinks more and more into his problems and eventually has a nervous breakdown. • He tries to convince himself of being in love with Lena and that they’re equally free. Actually, he’s keeping her almost a prisoner in his house: «You keep me here like… like prison. Like animal in cage.» (Chapter 22, p. 440) • Obsessed with looking for answers about himself and his life, he comes back to Charlie’s home and asks her to describe his identity, than feels relieved thanks to her honesty. «Selfish, self-obsessed, pig-headed […] insensitive, unfeeling, stubborn, stupid, selfish, selfish pig!» (Chapter 24, p. 484) - He wanders through London and someone mistakes him for a tramp, then offers Lena all his money and finally starts looking for his brother Pasha.

13. What is «In the Kitchen» really about? «Let’s say you are reading a novel and this novel is about a man’s life. It begins with his childhood and follows him through various events until, maybe, a crisis somewhere in middle age. […] As you read, the character is always making decisions, choices, about his life, thinking, vacillating, about which way he will go. […] But if we have got to know him, his make-up, his circumstances, then we know how he will act. […]. The protagonist cannot be otherwise, cannot do otherwise, and yet he is condemned to behave - as we all must - as if he were free.» (Chapter 22, pp. 445-446) Thriller vs socio-economic essay

14. In conclusion… Gabriel arrives at the station and gets on a strange bus that he recognizes to be an old bus of the «Imperial Hotel». It is full of immigrants. After a delusional night on the road, he arrives somewhere in the Norfolk countryside and the mystery is finally revealed. Yuri’s death was accidental, nothing significant about a dead illegal immigrant, but an entire human trafficking ranging from «bonded labour» to prostitution is discovered. Gleeson, the maître, manages a business with Ivan, one of the cooks: they «collect» immigrants from the hotel, looking for the most hopeless and needy, and sell them as prostitutes or farm labourers.

15. London is the largest city in the UK. This capital is home of a wide range of cultures and languages. As a matter of fact one in three residents isn’t born in Britain since they mainly come from India. London The great thing about London, thought Gabe, was that everyone was just a Londoner. The city bound everyone together or kept them all equally apart. (Chapter 11, p. 222)

16. On the other hand London has always been a multicultural landscape since its foundation by the Romans, which was followed by the Saxon and Norman conquest and it has been for a long time the capital of one of the biggest empires of the world, during the colonial period. So a lot of people moved to London from the empire’s peripheries.

17. The city has always offered a place where the immigrants made an attempt to establish a community in order to feel at home. This aspect is clear just thinking of the way in which the different cultures have shaped London. At the same time it’s the city itself to celebrate this multicultural reality with its food stalls, restaurants and street festivals, as the famous Notting Hill Carnival. In the novel Monica Ali perfectly describes the streets of London and its inhabitants coming from different parts of the world but what is fascinating is how she transports this macro reality in the micro reality of the kitchen of the Imperial hotel.

18. The Imperial Hotel The British kitchen of the Imperial hotel is crowded with people who come from every part of the world just as the streets of London, so in this description Monica Ali depicts the “immigrant Britain” reality on a small scale. Moreover the Imperial hotel itself seems to recall the colonial past of Great Britain in its structure, where the characters that hold a higher role in the hotel hierarchy are English and, on the other side, there are the “foreigners” that work for them. Still, he looked at his kitchen and brimmed with something that he wouldn't say was love. […] Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between. (Chapter 6, p. 129)

19. In this perspective Monica Ali summarises and reveals the forgotten aspects of the London multiculturalism in which the “foreigners” are used and even sold, as the reader discovers at the end of the novel, in order to enrich the ones who take advantage of their status of illegal immigrants.

20. In opposition to the glittering multicultural London and its concealed underground reality, there is the Northern England viewpoint about the presence of the “others” in Great Britain, represented by Gabriel’s father’s opinions: Northern England 'Great Britain,' said Ted, without looking up, 'no one says that any more. United Kingdom. Well, we're hardly that. It's going to the dogs, Gabe. Going to the dogs.' 'This kind of opportunity ... I've waited a long time for it.' 'We've lost the "Great". Know what else we've lost? Britishness. People keep talking about it. That's how you know it's gone.‘ (Chapter 12, p. 241) This quotation appears revelatory about the major concern of the British people who live estranged from the city universe, regarding the loss of their national identity perceived as deprived of its original value because of the arrival of the “others”.

21. At the same time the loss is perceived even in a more private sphere regarding the sense of community: Ted is talking to his son Gabriel in this passage but it is that part of England far from the cosmopolitan and postmodern city of London that is talking, the one that hardly can understand this new country where even buying a box of matches made in it is impossible. 'That's not what we're talking about,' said Ted. 'We're talking about how it was, when people round here cared about each other. When you knew everyone in the street and they knew you. Not that that means anything to you.’ (Chapter 12, p. 241) “You can’t buy a box of matches what’s made in this country, never mind a ship.” (Chapter 12, p. 242)

22. And this problem of a lost national identity, especially in the peripheries of this multicultural landscape, played and important role behind the “Brexit catastrophe”, as Salman Rushdie defined it when The Guardian interviewed him about his new book “The Golden house”.

23. Characters “He had no debts, he wasn’t an alcoholic, he didn’t take drugs, he didn’t live on sugar sandwiches and Coke; and he had come this far without bankruptcy, coronaries, divorce or psychotic breaks. Looking sideways (for what man is strong to resist?) he could say that things were not too bad.” (Chapter 4, p. 103) Gabriel Lightfoot , the maincharacter, is a 42-year-old Northern English executive chef. He seemsunable to musterenoughenergy to evenraisehis voice at the staff members. He appears as a self-centered man who goes through an identity crisis right after the body of Yuri is found dead in the hotel cellar. The real conflict comes from the collision of his life with Lena’s. Gabe is a fragile character and the only thing he had in common with the dead Ukrainian boy was the fact that both suffered of loneliness. He seems not to be open to the multicultural reality represented by the workers, but, with the passing of time, he tries to be more empathetic. His own surname, Lightfoot, testifies his tendency to run away from important decisions or compromise with others. Gabe

24. Characters Lena “Lena, in the marbled moonlight, was a carved beauty, a dying swan. Her lips were sheened to perfection, her flawless cheeks were pearled, and the unfathomable beauty of her eyelids would make a convert of any man. There she lay, his irritant, his ache, his skinny girl, colorless hair spread across the pillow, his salvation, his ruin, or neither, but simply his release.” (Chapter 8, p. 159) Lena is a skinny young Belarusian girl who was a sex slave. She decided to run away from her former pimp and was recently fired for her absence on the day of Yuri’s death. Lena is portrayed as a mysterious, tiny, surly girl who stands in direct opposition to Gabe’s articulate, feminine, understanding girlfriend Charlie. She offered him sex, probably because she knew sex was the only thing she could offer him. When she meets Gabe, he starts controlling her, increasing her insecurities. Even Lena who seemed to be the one who needed Gabe the most, abandons him.

25. Characters Yuri The Ukrainian night porter Yuri was found dead in the hotel basement, the place where he had lived. Gabe and Yuri did not have a close relationship. As the protagonist starts to investigate Yuri`s life, he discovers that they had one crucial thing in common: loneliness. We only know about him that he has two daughters and he hid his savings behind a brick wall. Fairweather He is one of Gabe’s backers in a new restaurant venture and a British MP, is the voice of political reason and corruption. Fairweather has his own, personal opinion on British identity. He claims that actually being British means being able to keep all your options open, being open-minded. In his opinion freedom, fairness, plurality are British core values. The British identity just like British economy for Fairweather is based on the concept of plurality but he also claims that multiculturalism is something linked to a kind of neutrality of values, a kind of nonidentity.

26. Characters Charlie Charlie is a red-haired talented nightclub singer and Gabe’s girlfriend. She would dearly love to settle down but when she learns of Gabe’s affair with Lena, she walks out. She is an insecure woman that, at the age of 38, is not happy with her life. “I`m not really a musician, am I? Not really a singer. Don`t even know what I want to listen to.” (Chapter 9,p. 183) She probably knows Gabe better than anyone does, in fact she doesn’t recognize him when he shows the first signs of his nervous breakdown. Ted Ted is Gabriel’s father, a retired Northern English mill worker who is dying of colorectal cancer. Gabe’s never got on well with his father but when he finds out that his father has been diagnosed with cancer, he tries to get closer to him. Ted regrets the Old Britain, the one in which everyone knew everyone, when people cared about each other, so for old people the sense of nostalgia for a more cohesive community is really evident. In the past, people knew what being British meant, in modern times you just need to pass the British citizenship test in order to claim that you’re British. He declares that the concept of Britishness is lost because of the arrival of immigrants.

27. Characters Sally Anne Sally Anne is Gabe’s mother. She is a bipolar woman who feels jealous of the relationship between her son and husband. Not explicitly shown in the novel, it still seems like the bond between Gabe and Ted vanishes because of her. When Gabe identifies with his father, Sally Anne gets depressed. She wants her little boy to herself. Sally Ann wants to do something else in her life, to be someone else. Indeed, she runs away with men, hides purchase from her husband and secretly goes out for drinks. Nana Sally Anne`s mother, Phyllis Henrietta Josephine Higson, called Nana in the novel, gives the impression that she wants to be someone else as well. Even though Nana is suffering from dementia, she is still the person she has always been. She lost her memory but she didn’t lose her prejudices about immigrants. She doesn’t understand the reason why they protest. She thinks that they are always complaining about this and that, and if they try to modify Great Britain into their motherland, they are wasting their time, because when they lived in their countries they weren’t happy with their lives, and this is the reason why they left and migrate. According to her, the color of the skin is not so important: what matters is what people do, and their behavior. She claims that she is not racialist (M. Ali “In the Kitchen”p.137), but her words speak by themselves.

28. Characters Oona Oona is Gabe’s Afro-Caribbean secretary and executive Sous Chef. Her physical appearance is really stereotyped: she represents the typical Afro-Caribbean woman with gold teeth and “fat feet” that belonged to a faith-based community. Oona,’ said Gabe, ‘there’s a calculator here.’ […] ‘Hoh’, said Oona, ‘calculator.’ She laughed her cosmic laugh.’ Give me the book,’ said Gabe. He stabbed at the calculator with a pen. ‘Hexercise’, said Oona, ‘got to hexercise the brain.’ (Chapter 13, p.263) Oona is kept on at the hotel for her encyclopedic institutional memory, but she’s homely and quaint, not a serious chef like Gabriel. Even if she is an immigrant from the Caribbean isles, she is not a subject to repression in England. She appears as an independent woman, who always expresses her opinion.

29. Characters Nikolai, Benny, Suleiman The Russian commis chef, one of Gabe`s best workers, is called “doctor”, because he really is. Nikolai was an obstetrician in Soviet Union and he was investigating birth defects. He made public his discovery and was branded as a spy because the factory supplied military parts, so he had exposed military secrets. For this reason he had to leave, he came to London and started to work in the kitchen. He sees things through a scientific point of view, especially when he talks with Gabe. At the same time Gabe trusts Nikolai and wants to be helped by him in order to find out the meaning of his recurring dream about Yuri. Benny, from Liberia, told Gabe a struggling story about his friend Kono, who became a child soldier. According to him, refugees know how to tell their story because it’s precious like a treasure; maybe it’s all that they possess, when they have been robbed of both material and immaterial things. Suleiman, from India, speaks a better English than Oona’s. He is the only one of Gabe’s workers who seems to show interest in cooking. His parents in India were selecting a number of girls from good families but, at first, his presence is not required, because their astrological charts must be matched. Even if he doesn’t believe in it, he thinks that this making bride selection appears to work as well as any Occidental system.

30. Characters Gleeson, Ivan, Victor Stanley Gleeson, the restaurant manager and Ivan, the Slavic grill chef, were suspected of trafficking people. Ivan gets girls from the hotel, Gleeson show them some photos, making these girls believe that they can become whatever they want, and then they sell them on. The same Gleeson is the man behind Gabe`s second discovery as well. With the help of his brother, he runs an onion farm where the employees are underpaid immigrants who are treated very badly and have their passports taken from them to lose all their rights. Victor is a Moldavan man who works at the Imperial Hotel. Thanks to Victor, Gabe finds out that there’s an illegal trafficking of women.

31. Themes And CriticalReferences In her third novel, In the Kitchen, Monica Ali creates a microcosm where gravitate several important themes of the post-colonial literature, already analysed in her previous works. Why this title? The title embodies the multicultural environment in which most of the novel takes place. In fact, the kitchen of the “Imperial Hotel” is populated by migrants from all over the world with their secret pasts and stories not easy to tell, while their superior is Gabriel Lightfoot an Englishman, a 42-year-old chef who is, secretly, trying to open his own restaurant.

32. Identity • ‘A language reveals the attitudes who use and shape it. […] At first, we were told, the goal was ‘integration’. Now this word rapidly came to be ‘assimilation’: a black man could only become integrated when he started behaving like a white one. After integration came the concept of ‘racial harmony’. And now there’s a catchword: ‘multiculturalism’ […]. Multiculturalism is the last token gesture […] and it ought to be exposed, like ‘integration’ and ‘racial harmony’ for the sham it is.’ (Rushdie 1992: 137)

33. This problem of identity and need of classification is very clear in the choices, made by Monica Ali, of the names of the places and the names of the characters. It is also clear in the way she describes the places with their iconic representations of the old “Great” Britain who seems having lost all its greatness, a memory made of glorious ruins, whose legacy is just in names, buildings, monuments and objects.

34. TWO DIFFERENT IDENTITIES The kitchen Imperial Hotel

35. Gabriel Lightfoot

36. “He looked into those eyes where he had so often looked and seen nothing, asif they were milky with cataracts. They were clear, bright blue. And he saw inthem pity. He saw compassion. Wasn't that a kind of love? He was more afraid of it than of her hate. Despite everything ... in spite of it all ... love was whatremained. Gabriel could not speak. He bowed his head. 'Gabriel,' said Lena, delivering a chaste kiss on his crown, 'like the angel.’” [Chapter 25, p. 499]

37. “He was like a general on a brief tour of the front line who, receiving a valiant and superficial wound, feels at one with his men. Still, he looked at his kitchen and brimmed with something that he wouldn't say was love. It wasn't love but it was something, when he took in his brigade, a United Nations task force all bent to their work.”[Chapter 6, p.129]

38. “You keep me here like ... like prison. Like animal in cage' said Lena. He could see what he was doing wrong. He looked at himself with a mixture of pity and disgust. What a sap. What a fool. Would he never learn? 'Do I lock you in? Do I beat you?' He should know better than to shout. He did know better. But here we go again. 'Don't I give you everything you ask for and more?' 'You promise,' said Lena, attacking her fingernail, 'but you don't give.’” [Chapter 22, p. 440]

39. ‘I was interested to examine a character living in a modern, metropolitan, multicultural society without any deep-rooted ties (in terms of work, family, community), who thinks he is perfectly adept at living in that world, and then to pile the pressure on him in order to strip him down to his bare essentials.’ Monica Ali

40. a life under control Yes or no? Gabriel vs Suleiman

41. “WHEN HE LOOKED BACK, HE FELT THAT THE DEATH OF THE UKRAINIAN was the point at which things began to fall apart. He could not say that it was the cause, could not say, even, that it was a cause, because the events which followed seemed to be both inevitable and entirely random, and although he could piece together a narrative sequence and take a kind of comfort in that, he had changed sufficiently by then to realize that it was only a story he could tell, and that stories were not, on the whole, to be trusted. Nevertheless, he fixed the beginning at the day of the Ukrainian's death, when it was the following dayon which, if a life can be said to have a turning point, his own began to spin.” (Chapter 1, p. 9) THE IDENTITY CRISIS Yuri’sdeath

42. The frontier is a wake-up call. At the frontier we can’t avoid the truth. […] Here at the edge, we submit to scrutiny, to inspection, to judgement. This people, guarding these lines must tell us who we are. We must be passive, docile. To be otherwise is to be suspect, and at the frontier to come under suspicious is the worst of all possible crimes. [..] the dangerous edge of things. This is where we must present ourselves as simple, as obvious: I’m coming home. I’m on a business trip. I’m visiting my girlfriend, I’m not anything you need to bother about, really I’m not. I’m not the fellow who voted against the government…. I’m one-dimensional. I’m simple. Let me pass. [ S. Rushdie, Step across this line, page 412]

43. “Gabriel was still gripped by the conviction that Nikolai knew why he had thedream; it was a faith that went beyond reason, was without explanation, anddefied all logic. He knew it in his bones. He wanted to seize Nikolai by the shoulders and shake it out of him. But it was Gabriel who shook as he put a handon Nikolai's arm and breathed, 'For God's sake, tell me why.' Nikolai smiled gently. 'OK, I'll tell you.' The words coursed through Gabriel's body. 'You think it has some significance. You want to know what that is. Am Icorrect?' 'Yes,' murmured Gabriel, 'yes.' 'The significance of Yuri's death,' said Nikolai, 'is that it is insignificant. Thatis why it is so troubling. That is why you dream.' He freed his arm from Gabriel's grasp. 'But this is only my interpretation and, of course, the dreambelongs to you. Naturally, you may interpret it any way you wish.’” [Chapter 23, p. 463]

44. The wake-up call for Gabe, is the meeting with Lena: a Belarussian migrant, victim of the sexual tourism. From this moment forward his Freudian crisis starts: dreams, nightmares hunted him, memories of his childhood and of the relationship with his family came up, her mother was no more the portrait of the perfection who made him believe in dreams and falling stars, but she became a bipolarised person with all her weaknesses. On the contrary, his relationship with his father improved after the discovery of his cancer and after a talk with his sister.

45. Family Relationship: Nostalgia, Melancholia and Understanding 'You didn't mean? What? Forget it, Gabe, no, just forget it, I don't even care. And about Mum, you shouldn't sound so superior because Dad did his best and you've never had family to cope with, not like that, not when there's someone ill for years and years and it's not even understood properly and you're just struggling on your own. Put yourself in his shoes, why don't you, and then you'll see how things really stand.’ […] 'She was ill,' said Jenny. 'Four or five times that happened and then there was all the shopping, endless stuff from catalogues that Dad and me would wrap up and send back. That was the mania, the manic episodes, and then she'd be depressed. Bipolar they call it now.' Gabe shook his head. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He went back to shaking his head. 'You can't tell me about Mum like that, as if ... as if ... Do you even realize what you've said? What you've accused her of ?' 'Oh, grow up,' said Jenny. 'When are you ever going to grow up?' [Chapter 11, pp. 231-232]

46. 'I felt so sorry for him,' said Jenny. 'Poor old Dad.' 'Poor old Dad? Poor me, poor you, poor Mum. She was never allowed, anyway ... I don't know. What about you? Don't you want to, sometimes, just get back to being yourself ?' She looked at him through slitted eyes. 'I am myself. What you see is whatyou get, Gabriel. And if you don't like it you know what you can do.' [Chapter 11, p. 230]

47. “Gabriel represents the struggle of contemporary British maleness to adapt to contemporary society and values” Before the crisis After the breakdown He starts to be interested in its busboys’ stories, Yuri, Benny, Seulemain, Viktor and Lena identities, he simply wants to know, wants to understand the Other. “Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African,Baltic and most places in between. Oona had taken on a new dishwasher, from Somalia or somewhere pretty much like that. The other one was Mongolian and the third was from where? the Philippines?” [Chapter 6, p. 129]

48. <<Death Squad, Lethal Weapon, Killer Dog ... Kono was not very tall for his age and his nickname was General Shoot-On-Tiptoes, for obvious reasons I think.’ […]'He did what child soldiers do and had cornrows and cowries in his hair, and every day he got high.'[…]'Then one day Kono went on a raid and they did the usual stuff, raping, looting, killing. When they had finished this work they relaxed for a while in this village. Some of the boy soldiers began playing football and Kono went to join in. He saw that they were using a woman's head for a ball. Kono joined in the game.' Gabriel looked sharply at Benny. 'I can see what you are thinking,' said Benny, 'heh, heh, you are thinking how can a human being do this? Even myself, I am thinking the same. What is it that makes us human? Are we just animals, after all?' 'This is your friend?' said Gabe. […] 'We are very close. After this day, he knew he had to get out. He decided he would rather die than stay. So when he was sent to the market one day to get food take it, not buy it, you understand he ran away. For a while he lived on the street in Monrovia, expecting every day to be his last. Then he met a friend of his father's, a Libyan businessman, who helped him get to Cairo. That is when I met him, ex-General Shoot-On-Tiptoes, Kono, my good friend.'>> [Chapter 7, pp. 157-158]

49. <<He couldn't describe himself. He couldn't see his own face. He would have to ask someone else. 'Suleiman,' he said, panting with excitement. 'Suleiman, if you had to describe me in three words, what would you say?' Suleiman peered anxiously over the top of his imaginary spectacles. 'Chef, could you please repeat the question?' 'Three words. Describe me. First three things that come into your head.' Suleiman looked aghast. 'Without preparation ' he began. Gabriel had already moved on to Benny. 'OK, listen, this is not a trick question and you can say whatever you like. How would you describe me in only three words?' 'Only three words?' said Benny. Gabe nodded eagerly. 'Yes, brilliant, you've got the idea. Good man.' 'I would say, tall.' He looked Gabe slowly up and down. 'Tall. White. Male.’>> <<He needed to know now, and he needed to know urgently, what he was. He grabbed at words. Fair. He was fair, oh yes, everyone said so, everyone knew it. He was fair and he was reasonable. That was him. A perfect description. Above all, he was a reasonable man. Maybe not this morning with Oona, no, that was out of character. He wasn't really like that. […] What am I? he thought. What am I? The question pinged round and round plaintively until, firing faster and faster, it took on a sharper edge. What am I? What am I? A nobody? A nothing? A zero? Am I a hollow man? He was angry.>> [Chapter 24, p. 478] Onlythreewords ?

50. 'You want me to talk about you?' shouted Charlie. 'It's all about you? You want me to tell you what you're like?' 'You're the one who knows me.' He could scarcely breathe but he pulled onone cigarette and then the next. In a moment she would tell him. Charlie, who knew him best. 'No,' she yelled. 'I won't do it. I'm not going to stand here and talk about you. I'm not interested. I don't care.' 'Oh, please,' said Gabriel with great ardour. 'I'll never ask you for anything else. All I'm asking for is a few words.' 'I'll tell you what you're like, then,' cried Charlie. 'You're selfish. You're themost selfish person I've ever met.' 'Oh, thank you,' said Gabriel, almost crying with relief. 'Selfish, I see, I'm sureyou're right, not the best quality but still ... and what else? Anything else you can think of ? Anything at all?' 'Self-obsessed, pig-headed ...' said Charlie.