Henna’s arranged marriage to Ricky-Rashid was rather enlightened for the 1950s as they had the opportunity to meet each other on a few occasions before the day itself; back then, it wouldn’t have been unusual for all arrangements to have been made between the heads of the families, and for the bride and groom to have met for the first time on their wedding day.

Arranged marriages were the norm for my grandparents’ generation, and still very common for my parents’ generation—my own parents were considered unconventional at the time, as they met at work, married for love, and organised their own wedding without parental involvement or approval. Arranged marriages still take place today, in the UK as well as in the Indian subcontinent; those that I know of have been approached in a more modern way, allowing for much greater consultation with the potential bride and groom from the outset, and involving several meetings before they agree to the marriage. In some cases, it’s more about “introduction” rather than “arrangement,” as it is left up to the couple whether or not they want to proceed and get to know each other better with a view to marrying. It’s hard for me to give an opinion on whether marriages like this are successful per se—as with any marriage, it depends on the willingness of both parties to work at it.

How autobiographical is your book?

I think it is tempting for many first-time authors to stick to what they know best and write semiautobiographical accounts—in my case, I got that out of my system with the first full-length manuscript I wrote, which was completed a year before I wrote Bitter Sweets, but wasn’t published. Bitter Sweets is a work of fiction, but I’ve used my personal experience for the locations; I lived for several years in southwest London’s Tooting, an immigrant melting pot where Asian, West Indian, and Irish cultures meet; like Omar, I read PPE [Politics, Philosophy, and Economics] at New College, Oxford University, and remember all the Oxford locations fondly from my student days. I hadn’t been to Bangladesh or Pakistan for many years when I was writing Bitter Sweets, but fortunately my mother was able to reawaken my childhood memories of these places through the stories she told. With regard to my characters, there is no single one whom I identify with, as the characters represent different aspects of myself, or the self that I would be if I were a scheming extrovert like Henna, or an unfulfilled romantic like Ricky-Rashid; like most authors, I have drawn heavily upon my own experiences of love and desire, despair and guilt, awkwardness and aspiration in creating them.

How has the Asian community reacted to Bitter Sweets?