Tariq Mehmood – författare

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, and Saleem Khan, an atheist, seventy years of age, is carrying the bomb. Also concealed on his person is a cache of vivid, haunting memories - some of regret and yearning, some humorous, others over-shadowed by the brutality of war. Award-winning novelist Tariq Mehmood plunges the reader into the dizzying saga of Saleem's incendiary history.In the 1960s, he left his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in rural Pakistan and emigrated to Bradford, a town crackling with racism. He found a job in a mill on an all-Asian night shift. He became an active trade unionist and later, when the mills closed down, drove a taxi. But inevitably he is impelled to return to Pakistan.From Pakistan, Saleem is drawn across the border into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Among Russian soldiers and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences promise to make sense of Saleem's own tortuous history.

Karen’s dad is Muslim from Pakistan and her mother is white Christian, and Karen feels as if she doesn't quite fit in . . . anywhere. So she's made a choice: she's switching sides. She’s going to convert to Islam to find her true identity. But Shamshad, her hijab-wearing school mate, isn’t making things easy for her. What's her deal, anyway? Is Shamshad really any more proper than her?Turmoil erupts as school battles are replaced by family troubles; name-calling turns to physical confrontation, and cataclysmic secrets are unveiled. Set against a backdrop of seething Islamophobia, You're Not Proper shines a light on issues of identity, religion, politics and class affecting young people today.