You're Not Proper

Karen thinks she's not proper white. Her dad is Pakistani and her mother is white Christian, and somehow she 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 Karen is? Set against a backdrop of seething prejudice, You're Not Proper goes deep into the world of Muslim youth, challenging their increasingly notorious and popularly held association with 'Allah-o-Akber-ers'. This novel takes us into a Britain in which people can no longer have a single identity, if ever they had one. Who belongs where, and who is proper in what place or in which circumstance are some of the major themes of this novel. And what happens to young people when all they hold dear is snatched away, sometimes violently, due to events and forces thousands of miles away?