The English Harem

In this hilarious, provocative, and highly topical story of food, love, and Islam, Anthony McCarten exposes the flaws inherent to a multicultural society, and explores the nature of racism from a startlingly original angle. Supermarket checkout girl Tracy Pringle has a very lively imagination indeed. In front of her, as she blip-blips herself into a daydream, she walks past not boring housewives with screaming children or tired office clerks, but the likes of Lord Byron, Lawrence of Arabia, and Princess Leia. It comes as no surprise, then, that she turns a blind eye when Her Majesty herself pops a pack of tarts into her purse without paying. Obviously, the management sees it differently, and Tracy is fired on the spot and forced to find herself another job. But nothing can prepare her for the new life that awaits her at the Taste of Persia restaurant, where she is flung headlong into a clash of cultures, languages, dinner plates, religions, and a rather tricky domestic arrangement.