The Study Circle — A Meditation on Growing up Muslim in Britain
“And there was no safe place, the baying of the outside world had collapsed the walls between public and private. Everything living outside, lived within.”
Sometimes a book comes along that’s so vivid in its portrayal of the world, that it both opens your eyes, and draws your attention uncomfortably to the gaping void it’s filling. By the second chapter of Haroun Khan’s masterful debut from DeadInk Books, I was painfully aware that I’d never read anything like it before — and that this in itself was shocking.
Set in and around a South London council estate, The Study Circle is a fearless portrayal of what it means to grow up poor and Muslim in modern Britain. Ishaq’s parents moved to London for a better life, but their children find themselves caught between two worlds. In one, Ishaq has fulfilled his family’s hopes by studying at university, but in the other, he grapples with what it means to keep his faith and support his community, while moving ever further away from them through the middle-class corridors of the English establishment.
At the Study Circle, a community group studying the Koran on the 17th floor of his council block, these two worlds collide. While increasing unrest…
