"The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers"
About this Quote
"The Dancing Girls of Lahore" signals everything that can trigger institutional skittishness at once: South Asian setting, women-centered subject matter, a title that risks being misread as either exotic promise or politically awkward exposure. Brown's matter-of-fact delivery suggests she knows how quickly a book like this gets shoved into marketing purgatory: too foreign to be "relatable", too specific to be "commercial", too charged to be "safe". Her final clause - "I'm not confident there will be any takers" - lands like a shrug, but it's also strategy. Understatement makes the critique sharper; she refuses the inspirational script of perseverance and instead spotlights the gatekeeping itself.
Calling Brown a celebrity matters. The subtext is: even with name recognition, the machinery can still shut you out if the story doesn't match the industry's comfort zone. That tension exposes a cultural moment in which diversity is celebrated as branding while remaining precarious as acquisition. The quote is less a complaint than a snapshot of soft power: how a market polices imagination by deciding, repeatedly, what it will not touch.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Brown, Louise. (2026, January 18). The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dancing-girls-of-lahore-was-offered-to-dozens-13423/
Chicago Style
Brown, Louise. "The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dancing-girls-of-lahore-was-offered-to-dozens-13423/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-dancing-girls-of-lahore-was-offered-to-dozens-13423/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.




