This poignant coming-of-age tale follows Meena, a young girl growing up in the only Punjabi family in a 1970s Black Country mining village. Meena spends her days happily getting into scrapes with the other local children until one day the impossibly cool Anita enters her life. Suddenly Meena knows exactly who she wants to be but is Anita all that she seems? Soon Meena's world is turned upside down as she is caught between two very different cultures. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It has been adapted for the stage by the multi-award-winning Tanika Gupta.

ミーラ・シャルが描く本作の本質は、七〇年代英国で自己の境界に揺れる少女を、ユーモアと切なさで切り取った点にあります。憧れのアニータは、主人公ミーナにとっての「鏡」であり、自己形成の象徴です。差別や格差を見つめる鮮烈な語り口は、読者の魂を激しく揺さぶります。 物語を貫くのは何者かになりたいという普遍的な渇望です。ミーナが直面する真実と家族の絆は、成長譚を超え、異文化が衝突する瞬間の痛切な美しさを描き出しています。本作は、自分の居場所をどこに求めるべきかを問い直す、至高の読書体験を約束してくれます。