Monica Ali’s Brick Lane recounts the experiences of Nazneen, a young woman in Bangladesh who after an arranged marriage travels to live with her husband in Tower Hamlets. Over the course of the novel Nazneen develops from a passive, shut-in migrant to an autonomous working woman whose life is compared and contrasted with her sister Hasina’s, who lives in Dhaka.

The Bengali migration to London goes back 400 years to lascar seamen hired by the East India Company, and lascars continued on merchant and navy ships well into the 20th century. Postcolonial events on the Indian subcontinent resulted in further migrations to London in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite the title – which the publisher imposed – neither the book nor the walk focuses on the street Brick Lane, but it’s part of the walking route as we follow Nazneen’s explorations of her new world.

The clothing sweatshops Bengalis worked in began to die out in London, though women like Nazneen continued to do piecework-sewing in their homes. Meanwhile migrants founded and worked in restaurants serving modified Bengali dishes, many in Brick Lane – places now referred to as curry houses or ‘Indian’ and located all over London. Brick Lane itself is still the site of struggles over how it should develop and who should live there.

Come see back-streets and estates of a highly diverse area both socially and architecturally, while listening to the words of Nazneen, her husband, sister, daughters and friends as they adapt to a new life and change their feelings about home. It’s a London most Londoners don’t know.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura’s longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.