Former Bolton School pupil and best-selling author Monica Ali
has released her latest novel - a fictionalised account of Princess
Diana in which she fakes her own death to make a new life for
herself in America.
'Untold Story' was initially intended to be a
short story, but when Monica started to research Diana's life she
became increasingly riveted, particularly by mention of the
princess's fantasies of living a "normal" life. Untold Story takes
the life of the world's most famous woman as a point of departure,
examining the past and imagining a future. The fictional princess
who is the novel's heroine is at breaking point and, believing that
the Establishment is plotting her assassination, she makes an
irrevocable decision: to stage her own death and begin a new life
under an assumed identity.
Despite controversy over the book, Ali, who was born in
Bangladesh before her family moved to Bolton at the age of 3, said
reviews had been mostly positive and she was "thrilled" with the
reaction to the book.
"I think the thing about Diana is there has been so much written
about her that is negative, and it has all been non fiction," she
said. "My book does take her as an inspiration, but it is a
fictionalised account. The great thing about this country is we
have a free press. It would be lovely if everyone liked what you
do, but generally I've been overwhelmed by the response to this
book from all around the world. What I decided to do was to write
about a fictional princess who has a reversal of the usual
fairytale".
There has already been film and television interest in the
novel, and Monica is considering writing the screenplay herself.
Her bestselling debut novel, Brick Lane, has already been made into
a film, and the author said she was "lucky" to have had it happen
once.
After leaving Bolton School, Monica continued her studies at
Wadham College, Oxford, with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and
Economics. She worked in design and as a copywriter, and didn't
begin writing fiction until the age of 31, after the birth of her
first child, when she started writing short stories whenever he was
taking a nap. A couple of years later, she began a novel,
provisionally entitled Thirteen Seas and Seven Rivers. She showed
the first four chapters to a friend who had a temporary job at a
publishing company and, within a couple of weeks, received the
offer of a publishing contract. The novel, which propelled her onto
Granta's list of Best Young British Novelists of the Decade and
went on to be translated into thirty languages, was published in
2003 under the title Brick Lane. It was described by The New
Republic magazine as 'a great achievement of the subtlest
storytelling'.