Supermarket checkout girl Tracy Pringle has a very lively imagination indeed. In front of her, as she blip-blips herself into a daydream, walk 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 packet of Mr Kipling's Bakewell tarts into her handbag without paying. Obviously, the management sees it differently, and Tracy is given the sack 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...

Anthony McCarten