About the Screenplay:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

East Is East is a facsimile of the shooting script that became one of the most successful British films ever made. It is the story of the Khan family, who live in the white, working-class Manchester suburb of Salford. Patriarch George Khan (played by Indian actor Om Puri) is the Pakistani owner of a fish-and-chips shop, married to Ella (Linda Bassett), a white English woman. They have seven mixed-race children, six sons and a daughter. George, who believes in a strict, traditional Muslim upbringing, is determined to raise his kids as Muslims, and every evening corrals them to go to a local mosque; he also tries to persuade his daughter to dress in saris rather than skirts.

Tony Khan and his brother Abdul are at an age where they can do anything, especially in a city as full of possibility – and women – as London. But their quest for the good life becomes one big game of dodge ball, as the boys cleverly and humorously avoid their father's restrictions at every turn.

And just as they start to lock in on their future, so does their father, who has made a little arrangement on their behalf marriage to two women they've never even met.

Their father's decision is unacceptable to Tony and Abdul, and the rebellion is on. When father George tries to put his foot down, his English wife, Ella, becomes caught in the middle of a flying circus, torn between loyalty toward her husband's beliefs and empathy toward her kids' desires to make their own way in the world.

After seducing both critics and audiences at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, East Is East went on to become a smashing critical and popular success. Despite not having a single bankable name in the cast, it became a genuinely populist word-of-mouth hit, grossing about $16 million, big numbers in the UK, especially for a British movie. At the box office it outstripped higher-profile and supposedly more accessible Hollywood films such as The Green Mile, Angela's Ashes and The End of the Affair. It earned a best British film prize at that year's BAFTAs and was acclaimed in countries as varied as Israel, South Africa and New Zealand taking in more than $30-million worldwide – more than 10 times the film's budget.

About the Screenwriter:

Ayub Khan Din is a British Pakistani actor who wrote the BAFTA, BIFA and London Film Critics Circle award-winning film East Is East, based on the original 1996 play that was nominated for an Olivier Award in 1998.