الفهرس 
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Abstract
This present study aims at examining the topic of identity and belonging of the Bangladeshi Muslim community in the postcolonial society, Britain through a close reading of one of the contemporary British fictions Brick Lane (2003) by the British Bangladeshi writer Monica Ali. Drawing upon an eclectic model consisting of Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s ”language appropriation strategies” (2002) and ”manifest intertextulaity” from Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (1995), the thesis aims at subverting the monolithic and authentic view of the British culture. More specifically, part of the study elucidates how Ali makes use of her fiction to dissolve the homogenous notion of “Englishness” and create a textual space to voice the Bangladeshi ethnic identity in a hybrid world like Britain. Furthermore, Monica Ali’s support for the transformation of the British society is extended to identity formation and how it is fluid and ever- changing. Hence, the rest of the study centers on exploring how Muslims’ identity, with a focus on the three characters ”Nazneen, Chanu, and Kareem”, is constructed in such a metropolitan society on the one hand, and how Ali depicts Islam, which is an organic part of the Bangladeshi’s cultural identity, and its ongoing tension with the West, on the other. The study generates visions of inclusion over exclusion and the possibility of finding a hybrid social space in Britain over assimilation and diaspora. The study investigates the narrative discourse in question in terms of two of the major postcolonial theorists, Stuart Hall and Homi K. Bhabha and their main concern with postcolonial cultural-identity crisis and cultural hybridity