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Ruby Tanya by Robert Swindells
This is a contemporary tale about two friends - one of whom, Asra, is an asylum seeker from an unnamed Eastern European country. The other, Ruby Tanya, is the daughter of a local man who is campaigning against the presence of asylum seekers in his community. During a dramatic explosion at the girls' school, a young teacher is killed. The asylum seekers at the local camp are blamed, and local people begin to argue that they should be deported. A branch of the National Front gets involved and demos are planned. Asra and her parents are due to be deported, but Asra runs away at the last minute so her parents have to return without her. She hides in a nearby derelict building and is helped by Ruby Tanya.
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
7 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
Robert Swindells
172 books101 followersRobert Swindells was born in Bradford in 1939, the eldest of five children. He left the local Secondary Modern School at fifteen to work as a copy holder on the local newspaper. At seventeen he enlisted in the RAF and served for three years, two in Germany. On being discharged he worked as a clerk, engineer and printer until 1969 when he entered college to train as a teacher having obtained five 'O' levels at night-school. His first book 'When Darkness Comes' was written as a college thesis and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1972. In 1980 he gave up teaching to write full time. He likes travelling and visits many schools each year, talking and reading stories to children. He is the secutatry of his local Peace Movement group. Brother in the Land is his first book for Oxford University Press. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Bradford.
Author description taken from Brother in the Land.
Author description taken from Brother in the Land.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
March 26, 2019
This book is about a girl named ruby Tanya and she has an asylum friend named asra . I liked how it was told by both the girls point of view . The start was a bit slow but once I got into it it was gripping. I think it deserves a 4 star as it was a slow beginning.
June 30, 2015
At the beginning of this term, Miss Picton showed us a book to read named 'Ruby Tanya'. We have been reading this book for awhile now, and we only finished it last week. It was a very interesting book to read, as it appeals to children, and adults. It was made by Robert Swindells, who is a professional author of many critically acclaimed books. We have only read Ruby Tanya though. I found most of the book to be interesting to read about. Some small flaws in the book are, that it sometimes can be in the heat action from one character, but then it skips to a calm point of perspective from another character. This is where a good point shows as well. It tells the story from two different peoples perspective, one a young British girl named Ruby Tanya, and the other a asylum seeker, living in Britain, named Asra. Over all it is a good book to read in your spare time.
June 30, 2015
This book was interesting and intriguing, towards the end it became more suspenseful and kept me on my toes. Robert Swindells has an interesting writing style that persuaded me to turn the page after page. The book was shown through the perspectives of two best friends, Asra and Ruby, struggling through racism and their own family problems.
Ruby Tanya is a recommended book for teenagers as I believe they can relate to the complications for example, racism and being an outcast. Many of the language in the book is not the common and correct English grammar but, with slang that is around nowadays such as 'div', 'fratching' and 'twonk'. Furthermore the book is engaging as Robert Swindells cleverly wrote this book through different eyes and the plot was interesting.
Ruby Tanya is a recommended book for teenagers as I believe they can relate to the complications for example, racism and being an outcast. Many of the language in the book is not the common and correct English grammar but, with slang that is around nowadays such as 'div', 'fratching' and 'twonk'. Furthermore the book is engaging as Robert Swindells cleverly wrote this book through different eyes and the plot was interesting.
June 30, 2015
This is a story about a young girl called Ruby Tanya. She is best friends with an asylum seeker girl called Asra. Her friendship with Asra is complicated when a bomb goes off at their school and the asylum seekers are blamed. What makes it even more difficult is that Ruby Tanya's dad campaigns against the asylum seekers. Eventually, Asra and her parents are forced to be sent to their old country where they will be killed. Ruby Tanya and Asra devise a plan to let Asra and her parents stay in England, and while doing so, they discover a dark plot by a local property dealer...
I think this book is very well written and I like how the perspective/point of view changes between Ruby Tanya and Asra Saber. I give this book 4/5 stars. Great job Robert.
I think this book is very well written and I like how the perspective/point of view changes between Ruby Tanya and Asra Saber. I give this book 4/5 stars. Great job Robert.
June 30, 2015
I recently read Ruby Tanya in our English class at school, I found it interesting and left me on the edge of my seat constantly. The story tells of the British town Tipton Lacey, which is occupied by both asylum seekers and English men and women. the discriminatory issues in the town only increase when a bomb was planted at the school. Two friends, Ruby Tanya, and Asra Saber, pay no attention to this discrimination, although they are in completely different situations regarding it. When they discover the sinister plot behind the bombing, they will do all they can to stop it.
This book shows great examples of empathy and friendship, creating a perfect book for young readers.
This book shows great examples of empathy and friendship, creating a perfect book for young readers.
February 26, 2024
Required English reading from three years ago. I can't remember much about it but it wasn't exactly gripping.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
June 30, 2015
I did enjoy Ruby Tanya with a passion and had fun reading this book with the class. It held a constant feel of drama and nail biting action with a few moments to breathe again. This book was definitely a joy and held its own throughout. Would advice anyone to pick this up with a great story and short chapters. 8/8
June 30, 2015
The book started of really good. It was very interesting and I was enjoying it a lot. as the book went on it dragged on longer than it should an it started to get boring. the end of the book felt rushed because the main event at the end of the book was about 4 chapters long which is around 12 pages.
June 30, 2015
I just finished reading Ruby Tanya in my English class and I found the book interesting and adventurous but during the middle of the book it became a bit boring. The ending was shocking but also really fascinating.
June 30, 2015
It was a bit of a boring book because it was mostly taken up by the same thing happening over and over again. The end was rushed and could have had more detail to it. I would not recommend reading this book because it is a waste of precious time
June 30, 2015
the book was sort of adventurus but I still didn't like it because it wasn't my style of reading and also the ending was so rushed and totally not suited to the book. I recommend not reading the book because it is not worth the read and also a waste good time.
June 30, 2015
I liked this book very much as it was interesting, there was a lot of suspense, it was realistic. I would recommend reading this book as it would be a good use of spare time and it could teach you some life long lessons.
June 30, 2015
Ruby Tanya gave me a good inside to the life of asylum seekers. 4/5 stars, pretty good book.
June 30, 2015
This book was very good from the start till about twenty pages from the end as it was a bit rushed when most of the stuff happened but apart from that it was a really good book to read.
January 6, 2016
The older I get, the more I find that I prefer reading what’s called by the rather unflattering name of Young Adult fiction. I mean those usually slim books, usually written by Britons of various hues, which pretend to cater to the tastes of late teenagers. They tend to be short (to suit the mayfly attention span of the typical teenager) and (for the same reason) move the story along briskly. Unlike, say, the unspeakable Frederick Forsythe, there’s no time wasted in endless exposition designed to show off the author’s research and to hide the paper-thin weakness of the plot. And there’s no compulsory romance subplot (meant to appeal to the female readership, I assume), gratuitous sex or overcomplicated conspiracies that depend on twenty different things going just right if they’re to succeed.
It’s the early 2000s. The pretty little British village of Tipton Lacey seems very nice and calm on the surface, but things aren’t anything like as fine underneath. A large number of refugees – brown-skinned Muslims, O horrors – have been resettled in a temporary detention camp in an abandoned Air Force base. They’ve fled a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing in their homeland, an unnamed Asian country, but from the names of the people I’ll bet you they’re meant to be Pakistanis. You don’t get Arabs called Butt and Akhtar and Malik, or Kurds or Iranians either.
One of the girls in the local school, which the refugee children also attend, is twelve-year-old Ruby Tanya Redwood. Her best friend is Asra, the daughter of one of the refugee couples in the camp. And here’s the problem: her father, Ruby Tanya's that is, a real estate agent by trade, is also a far-right winger who wants the “terrorists” deported back where they came from, because Britain is for the British only.
That might not have mattered so much, if there hadn’t been a bomb blast in the school one day in which two students were badly injured and a student teacher killed. The villagers, led by Ruby Tanya’s father, immediately blame the “terrorists” at the refugee camp, and plan demonstrations against them. Ruby Tanya and Asra are forced to meet clandestinely, and the bullies at school have a field day picking on the refugee children. And that’s not all that happens...
Ruby Tanya’s father, the Britain-for-the-British radical, makes contact with a far right wing party with a militant wing. It promises to back him in local elections in return, and – once the “terrorists” have been evicted from the derelict airfield – to let him handle the “developments” which will be constructed on the “liberated” land.
Meanwhile, the police arrest and interrogate Asra’s father, a chemical engineer, on the grounds that only he could have had the knowledge to make a bomb. Though he’s found innocent, his application for asylum is rejected and the family is due to be forcibly deported back to where they came from.
Ruby Tanya and Asra hatch a plan together for the latter to hide in a deserted farm in another part of the old airport. With the connivance of Ruby Tanya’s grandmother, an old-time liberal who furnishes them with bedding and utensils apart from food, they stock the old farmhouse and equip it as a refuge. When the police come for Asra’s family, she somehow manages to escape and hides out in the farmhouse while her family is deported.
Around the same time, Ruby Tanya’s mother – who is also a liberal, and has no sympathy with her husband’s political aims – discovers from her husband that it wasn’t the refugees who had set the bomb. He’s overheard things which have made him believe that it was the radical Nazi party itself which was responsible for the bombing, and the dead student teacher had actually been planting the bomb when it had gone off and killed him. This leads to a break in his relations with the Nazis but doesn’t dent his political ambitions, which still revolve around evicting the refugees.
Meanwhile, Asra is still hiding in the old farm, undiscovered despite a massive search for her. It is while she’s hiding there that she sees and hears things which lead her to believe something much worse is being planned...
...I am not going to put up any spoilers here, so I’m not going to describe the story further. But it has a fairly predictable denouement, with most of the loose ends tied up at the end and most of the characters living “happily ever after”. If that were all there was to the book I wouldn’t have bothered reviewing it.
No. The thing about this little novel that brought tears to my eyes is the wonderful friendship between the two girls. The story is told in chapters from both their points of view, about three chapters of Ruby Tanya alternating with one of Asra, except for the very last one which is a joint one from them both. They are utterly believable characters, so much so that I find it impossible to believe they weren’t patterned on real people. Ruby Tanya, rebellious, disgusted with her parents’ “fratching”, despising her father ("the Moron") while still unable to shake her love for him; and Asra, fearful of the British, terrified for her own family, and yet desperately yearning for her only friend, Ruby Tanya. These two are wonderful, deeply moving young ladies, and I defy anyone to read the book without feeling for them as people.
There’s also the wonderful use of styling in the novel. It feels odd at first when one sees that there is absolutely no use of quotation marks, so that the reader has to decide for him/herself where conversations begin and end. But since the story is told as what’s going on in the minds of the two girls, that fits right in. After all, one doesn’t put mental quotes around what people say when one’s talking to them.
And there’s the language, too. None of the book is in standard English. The Ruby Tanya chapters are in English school slang of the period, replete with words like “div”, “twonk” or the aforementioned “fratching” (quarrelling). Asra’s chapters are told in the kind of English a beginner might use, complete with grammatical errors aplenty, but steadily improving as the book progresses and she becomes more expert. And as she speaks, we catch multiple glimpses of the situation in her homeland, where villages are cluster-bombed and one can be called a “goat” for belonging to the wrong ethnic group.
Of course I have problems with the book, too. Nothing’s perfect, after all. One is the too-pat ending, quite predictable as it is. Another is a speech that Ruby Tanya’s mother makes to her husband, calling Britain a land of freedom. Yes, it’s such a land of freedom. Ask those of us who were enslaved and looted to destitution by the British what a land of freedom it is.
But still it was worth reviewing, and there’s little higher praise than that.
Note: I’ve read a few other reviews which claim that the refugees were from an “unnamed East European country”. Where they came up with that one I don’t know, because the book clearly calls them “Asian” and says it was a desert country with hot days and cold nights. I suppose using "east European" comes so easily to Westerners that they no longer even think about it.
It’s the early 2000s. The pretty little British village of Tipton Lacey seems very nice and calm on the surface, but things aren’t anything like as fine underneath. A large number of refugees – brown-skinned Muslims, O horrors – have been resettled in a temporary detention camp in an abandoned Air Force base. They’ve fled a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing in their homeland, an unnamed Asian country, but from the names of the people I’ll bet you they’re meant to be Pakistanis. You don’t get Arabs called Butt and Akhtar and Malik, or Kurds or Iranians either.
One of the girls in the local school, which the refugee children also attend, is twelve-year-old Ruby Tanya Redwood. Her best friend is Asra, the daughter of one of the refugee couples in the camp. And here’s the problem: her father, Ruby Tanya's that is, a real estate agent by trade, is also a far-right winger who wants the “terrorists” deported back where they came from, because Britain is for the British only.
That might not have mattered so much, if there hadn’t been a bomb blast in the school one day in which two students were badly injured and a student teacher killed. The villagers, led by Ruby Tanya’s father, immediately blame the “terrorists” at the refugee camp, and plan demonstrations against them. Ruby Tanya and Asra are forced to meet clandestinely, and the bullies at school have a field day picking on the refugee children. And that’s not all that happens...
Ruby Tanya’s father, the Britain-for-the-British radical, makes contact with a far right wing party with a militant wing. It promises to back him in local elections in return, and – once the “terrorists” have been evicted from the derelict airfield – to let him handle the “developments” which will be constructed on the “liberated” land.
Meanwhile, the police arrest and interrogate Asra’s father, a chemical engineer, on the grounds that only he could have had the knowledge to make a bomb. Though he’s found innocent, his application for asylum is rejected and the family is due to be forcibly deported back to where they came from.
Ruby Tanya and Asra hatch a plan together for the latter to hide in a deserted farm in another part of the old airport. With the connivance of Ruby Tanya’s grandmother, an old-time liberal who furnishes them with bedding and utensils apart from food, they stock the old farmhouse and equip it as a refuge. When the police come for Asra’s family, she somehow manages to escape and hides out in the farmhouse while her family is deported.
Around the same time, Ruby Tanya’s mother – who is also a liberal, and has no sympathy with her husband’s political aims – discovers from her husband that it wasn’t the refugees who had set the bomb. He’s overheard things which have made him believe that it was the radical Nazi party itself which was responsible for the bombing, and the dead student teacher had actually been planting the bomb when it had gone off and killed him. This leads to a break in his relations with the Nazis but doesn’t dent his political ambitions, which still revolve around evicting the refugees.
Meanwhile, Asra is still hiding in the old farm, undiscovered despite a massive search for her. It is while she’s hiding there that she sees and hears things which lead her to believe something much worse is being planned...
...I am not going to put up any spoilers here, so I’m not going to describe the story further. But it has a fairly predictable denouement, with most of the loose ends tied up at the end and most of the characters living “happily ever after”. If that were all there was to the book I wouldn’t have bothered reviewing it.
No. The thing about this little novel that brought tears to my eyes is the wonderful friendship between the two girls. The story is told in chapters from both their points of view, about three chapters of Ruby Tanya alternating with one of Asra, except for the very last one which is a joint one from them both. They are utterly believable characters, so much so that I find it impossible to believe they weren’t patterned on real people. Ruby Tanya, rebellious, disgusted with her parents’ “fratching”, despising her father ("the Moron") while still unable to shake her love for him; and Asra, fearful of the British, terrified for her own family, and yet desperately yearning for her only friend, Ruby Tanya. These two are wonderful, deeply moving young ladies, and I defy anyone to read the book without feeling for them as people.
There’s also the wonderful use of styling in the novel. It feels odd at first when one sees that there is absolutely no use of quotation marks, so that the reader has to decide for him/herself where conversations begin and end. But since the story is told as what’s going on in the minds of the two girls, that fits right in. After all, one doesn’t put mental quotes around what people say when one’s talking to them.
And there’s the language, too. None of the book is in standard English. The Ruby Tanya chapters are in English school slang of the period, replete with words like “div”, “twonk” or the aforementioned “fratching” (quarrelling). Asra’s chapters are told in the kind of English a beginner might use, complete with grammatical errors aplenty, but steadily improving as the book progresses and she becomes more expert. And as she speaks, we catch multiple glimpses of the situation in her homeland, where villages are cluster-bombed and one can be called a “goat” for belonging to the wrong ethnic group.
Of course I have problems with the book, too. Nothing’s perfect, after all. One is the too-pat ending, quite predictable as it is. Another is a speech that Ruby Tanya’s mother makes to her husband, calling Britain a land of freedom. Yes, it’s such a land of freedom. Ask those of us who were enslaved and looted to destitution by the British what a land of freedom it is.
But still it was worth reviewing, and there’s little higher praise than that.
Note: I’ve read a few other reviews which claim that the refugees were from an “unnamed East European country”. Where they came up with that one I don’t know, because the book clearly calls them “Asian” and says it was a desert country with hot days and cold nights. I suppose using "east European" comes so easily to Westerners that they no longer even think about it.
August 20, 2019
I read this from the school library when I was about 8/9 and remember loving it
May 7, 2020
Topical about asylum seekers, well written showing both sides.
Read
April 20, 2021Anybody know who the girl on the cover is?
May 17, 2021
The story itself was action packed and fun, but I did get a little annoyed at the lack of Quotation Marks.
March 12, 2023
it was ok
March 5, 2016
In 2015, a young substitute teacher was murdered in Trollhättan, Sweden. Two children were hurt. The killer was a 20-year-old man that symphatised with the right-wing nazis. The school was located in an immigrant majority area and the victims were of ethnic origin. The substitute teacher was the same age as me, and he died to protect the children as his murderer swung his SWORD.
In 2015, the right-wing extremists and neo-nazis protested the amount of Syrian refugees coming to Sweden and Europe. They closed their borders. Refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
In 2015, refugee shelters in Sweden were burnt to the ground. Churches, town halls, newly prepared shelters; in less than a month around 15 shelters were destroyed because some people didn't want the refugees to come here.
In 2016, the segregated rich areas of Gothenburg (Askim, Billdal, etc) started a ballot against accepting Syrian refugees. They think the refugees will bring danger and make them feel unsafe in their own homes. They argue for their children's safety, their wish to walk around at night feeling safe.
You know what scares me? People who think this way. I will probably never feel safe walking alone in the dark, and the refugees are not to blame for this fear. I am afraid of the people who value human lives so low that they would rather let thousands of people die on the Mediterranean than change their wealthy ways of life.
This book scared me because of its relevance. 10 years after publishing it is still so relevant and the accuracy scares me. It is too real. This is a book that will force its way into my future classroom. It is so important and it highlights so many aspects of our modern ways of life. It is a mind opener, especially to the way in which our children perceive us. Brilliant.
In 2015, the right-wing extremists and neo-nazis protested the amount of Syrian refugees coming to Sweden and Europe. They closed their borders. Refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
In 2015, refugee shelters in Sweden were burnt to the ground. Churches, town halls, newly prepared shelters; in less than a month around 15 shelters were destroyed because some people didn't want the refugees to come here.
In 2016, the segregated rich areas of Gothenburg (Askim, Billdal, etc) started a ballot against accepting Syrian refugees. They think the refugees will bring danger and make them feel unsafe in their own homes. They argue for their children's safety, their wish to walk around at night feeling safe.
You know what scares me? People who think this way. I will probably never feel safe walking alone in the dark, and the refugees are not to blame for this fear. I am afraid of the people who value human lives so low that they would rather let thousands of people die on the Mediterranean than change their wealthy ways of life.
This book scared me because of its relevance. 10 years after publishing it is still so relevant and the accuracy scares me. It is too real. This is a book that will force its way into my future classroom. It is so important and it highlights so many aspects of our modern ways of life. It is a mind opener, especially to the way in which our children perceive us. Brilliant.
February 15, 2012
Robert Swindells has never shied away from revealing the home truths of our society and challenges young people to think for themselves and in few novels does that come across with more elegance than Ruby Tanya.
Ruby Tanya is the young daughter of a fierce British nationalist who befriends another young girl, Asra, from the town's local refugee camp. When crisis hits the town racial tensions arise and it is difficult for their friendship to last against bigotry.
But what would Ruby do if she thought that Asra, and all the refugees, were being framed and now were in serious danger.
Ruby Tanya is the young daughter of a fierce British nationalist who befriends another young girl, Asra, from the town's local refugee camp. When crisis hits the town racial tensions arise and it is difficult for their friendship to last against bigotry.
But what would Ruby do if she thought that Asra, and all the refugees, were being framed and now were in serious danger.
June 30, 2015
This book is a beautiful story of Ruby Tanya and her friend Asra Saber, a asylum seeker from Iraq. Ruby Tanya and Asra fight for the asylum seekers rights as they are all accused of bombing the local school. Ruby Tanya fights against her father because her father hates the asylum seekers. Ruby Tanya and Asra go through many hard emotional journeys. A great sympathetic story.
February 20, 2016
A great book about a girl called Ruby Tanya, and her friend Asra. Asra is an asylum seeker and Ruby Tanya's dad is leading the campaign against them!
This book is written a chapter of Ruby Tanya as the narrator, then the next chapter with Asra as the narrator. This is good because it gives you both girls points of view, and you really get to know both of them.
This book is written a chapter of Ruby Tanya as the narrator, then the next chapter with Asra as the narrator. This is good because it gives you both girls points of view, and you really get to know both of them.
December 13, 2013
This book was read to me (and my class) by my year 6 teacher in school and I adored listening to the tale. It has stuck with me for many years and I've never forgotten 'Ruby Tanya's' name. I should probably read this book again at some point as I remember it to be truly brilliant.
March 21, 2010
Pretty average, but not so bad I'd only give it one star. Actually a pretty entertaining and interesting story, it was just the writing that brought it down a lot I felt.
June 30, 2015
The story had a great start and was very intriguing but the ending was very sudden and rushed which wasn't to fun to read.
September 22, 2016
A great story, that end far too quickly, and leaves you wanting more. Not so keen on the writing style, but that is personal preference.
Want to read
November 17, 2014good
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews