Anita and Me (Collins Modern Classics)

The debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach. The story of nine-year-old Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington.

Blonde, sassy and rebellious, Anita Rutter is everything nine-year-old Meena wants to be. Growing up in the only Punjabi family in the village, Meena is desperate to break free from her parents. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not her family’s endless Diwali celebrations. And more than anything, she wants Anita to accept her into her gang.

But is a friendship with Anita Rutter really everything it seems?

A vivid portrait of a British childhood in the 1970s, Anita and Me is a novel rich with humour and compassion – a poignant story of immigration, adolescence and belonging.

About the Author

Meera Syal is a writer, actress, playwright, comic and novelist. She wrote the screenplays for the films Bhaji on the Beach and the multi-award-winning My Sister Wife. Anita and Me, her first novel, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her second novel, Life Isn’t All Ha-Ha, Hee-Hee, was published in 1999.

Reviews

”Tom Sawyer meets Cider with Rosie en route to India via Wolverhampton. A wonderful book – treat yourself." —Ben Elton

"Funny, moving and packed full of wonderful surprises. —Esther Freud

"This is a funny, sad book. It made me long to be a kid again, yet grateful I’d grown up." —Jo Brand

”Anita and Me is full of pleasure. Syal is as skilful at rendering the saucy, ballsy backchat of the Tollington women as she is at describing Meena’s 'uncles and aunties', her parents’ Indian friends. The book is expertly structured and engagingly written, illuminated throughout by Meena’s ironical irreverence and robustness of spirit. I can give it no higher recommendation." —Laura Tennant, Guardian