Migrazione, mystery e melting pot nella cucina di Monica Ali

Against the background of a fast-changing national and political context as far as migration flows and the corresponding immigration policies are concerned, the article aims to investigate the innovative aspects with which In the Kitchen (2009), the third novel by the black British writer Monica Ali, deals with the theme of migration, playing with the narrative conventions of crime fiction. The reflection moves from the deconstruction of the meaning of the two main spatial poles represented in the novel’s setting, the big cosmopolitan hotel in London where the main character works as a chef, and the post-industrial city in Northern England where he was born. While these two universes could once emblematise the centre and the periphery, anchoring life geographies to stable points of reference and to communities with an apparently coherent identity, the unpredictable flows of globalisation no longer respect recognisable borders, thus urging a radical rethinking of the notions of belonging and citizenship which lie at the heart of In the Kitchen.