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The Study Circle
High up on the 17th floor of a South London council block, a study circle is being held. They re studying the Koran and Ishaq has been attending for five years now, but official interest in the group is building. With an EDL march in just a few days time, some of them think they might be under surveillance. Ishaq is secure in his identity as British and Muslim but, as papers discuss Asian sex gangs in the North and a European politician appears on television discussing a final solution, he wonders if Britain itself sees him the same way. When he runs into Shams, an old friend looking for work, Ishaq offers to help him out. And that s all it takes to begin a chain reaction that will collide with extremism, nationalism, and MI5.
Based upon Haroun Khan s own experiences with extremism being brought up on a South London council estate, The Study Circle is a groundbreaking look into the state of modern Britain through the lives of urban Muslim youth.
Based upon Haroun Khan s own experiences with extremism being brought up on a South London council estate, The Study Circle is a groundbreaking look into the state of modern Britain through the lives of urban Muslim youth.
200 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2018
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284 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 3, 2018
Completely blown away by this book, never in a million years was I expecting something this good. The blurb says this book is "Groundbreaking", that is so true, it also has the potential to become a modern classic. It's handling of sensitive subject matter in a time when the world is on the edge of chaos, was sublime. The last 70 pages were read in a blur, I could feel this weight in the pit of my stomach as the book reaches it's inevitable conclusion.
Ishaq, Marwane and Shams are three very different lads who have been friends since they were little. Ishaq has the weight of the world on his shoulders, trying to find his place in a chaotic world, he finds it tough dealing with the prejudices a Muslim faces everyday. Shams is a troubled youth, not as bright as Ishaq and easily influenced by others, his recent life choices has set a series of events in motion. Marwane is a top lad, he is the rock that keeps the other two going, he's in the background a lot of the time but without him there then things would have fallen apart ages ago. The story follows these three with the backdrop of an impending EDF march.
In an world where Brexit exists for all the wrong reasons this becomes a very important book, the sort of book that should be read in schools, it gives the reader an insight into a misunderstood race/religion. I expect this is going to end up being the best book I've read this year and I highly recommend it, don't miss out on this reading experience.
Blog review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...
Ishaq, Marwane and Shams are three very different lads who have been friends since they were little. Ishaq has the weight of the world on his shoulders, trying to find his place in a chaotic world, he finds it tough dealing with the prejudices a Muslim faces everyday. Shams is a troubled youth, not as bright as Ishaq and easily influenced by others, his recent life choices has set a series of events in motion. Marwane is a top lad, he is the rock that keeps the other two going, he's in the background a lot of the time but without him there then things would have fallen apart ages ago. The story follows these three with the backdrop of an impending EDF march.
In an world where Brexit exists for all the wrong reasons this becomes a very important book, the sort of book that should be read in schools, it gives the reader an insight into a misunderstood race/religion. I expect this is going to end up being the best book I've read this year and I highly recommend it, don't miss out on this reading experience.
Blog review is here> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...
March 20, 2019
Haroun Khan skilfully uses the book as a vehicle to explore class, race and religion in South London. The characters are predominantly second-generation, immigrant, urban, Muslim youth, each with their own experience of Islam. Through these varying experiences, Khan facilitates contrasting perspectives on diverse issues.
The story begins with the protagonist, Ishaq, attending a study circle in a seventeenth storey flat in a South London tower block. ‘Ishaq’s eyelids felt heavy. He wanted to close them’. I felt a striking empathy with him. Thankfully, the writing becomes less viscous, when he leaves the meeting. So, do persevere.
The text is philosophical and political, but that impedes neither the plausibility of the characters nor the outstanding depiction of the locality.
Khan presents a tight Muslim community that contains unique individuals, each with their own past, opinions, values and dreams. It becomes clear that sweeping statements about ‘British Muslims’ are as extraneous as generalisations about ‘British Christians’.
I was inspired to add this to my ‘want to read’ bookshelf by Goodreads friend Jason. He was ‘completely blown away’ by it. I don’t quite share the same sentiment, but it is undeniably an interesting and, for me, educational novel.
The story begins with the protagonist, Ishaq, attending a study circle in a seventeenth storey flat in a South London tower block. ‘Ishaq’s eyelids felt heavy. He wanted to close them’. I felt a striking empathy with him. Thankfully, the writing becomes less viscous, when he leaves the meeting. So, do persevere.
The text is philosophical and political, but that impedes neither the plausibility of the characters nor the outstanding depiction of the locality.
Khan presents a tight Muslim community that contains unique individuals, each with their own past, opinions, values and dreams. It becomes clear that sweeping statements about ‘British Muslims’ are as extraneous as generalisations about ‘British Christians’.
I was inspired to add this to my ‘want to read’ bookshelf by Goodreads friend Jason. He was ‘completely blown away’ by it. I don’t quite share the same sentiment, but it is undeniably an interesting and, for me, educational novel.
November 16, 2018
“Many English novelists have had the luxury of turning to the interior. The comfort of seeing the individual as … independent from all around them: the book as an excavation of the self.” In a recent essay accompanying the publication of his first novel The Study Circle, Haroun Khan explicates the motivations behind his political novel. His remark is interestingly close to what Richards Powers recently said about the privileging of the psychological over the outer experience in literary fiction. But times are changing, or, at least, novels are branching to different directions. Powers’ environmental epoch The Overstory was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize earlier this year, whereas Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City, portraying a more heterogeneous London, was longlisted for the same prize. Speaking of Powers in the context of Gunaratne and Khan might seem odd, but they all share the anxiety of living in a self-centered world, and all are more or less desperate for change.
Gunaratne’s novel is easily comparable to Khan’s The Study Circle. Whereas the former navigates around the northern parts of London, Khan depicts South London with great detail. He charts the experience of living in estate housing around Tooting and Streatham, and follows a group of characters in an increasingly hostile environment where, for instance, the English Defence League is gaining ground. Ishaq is a university student who’s not sure whether to pursue a doctorate when an auspicious but morally questionable opportunity arises; Shams is looking for work which turns out to be quite a challenge for someone with a background like his. Khan’s writing is often atmospheric, not rushing to move the plot forward as the protagonists move in the city:
For the first time in its history the southern side of the river was rapidly gentrifying, to mirror the north, but echoes of what had been still lingered. It held narrow streets that had once hosted boozy inns, whorehouses, docks, and a wretched prison. He wondered whether people from that other time looked across the water in the same way. Unimaginable wealth poured through those offices, in instruments and methods that the general public could hardly imagine. Everything was centred around servicing the needs of those few. Maybe that was the real London.
These descriptions are accompanied by incisive critiques of white, well-off Londoners, as, for instance, Ishaq notes:
As if they got everything right? All that wealth and the English were still miserable bastards. They had lost any religion; they poured scorn on any spirituality. The void couldn’t be filled by intellectualism, as they distrusted that too. They had no real shared culture across their classes except for crap television and consuming in excess. They were inhospitable to foreigners, sometimes to the point of being hateful. But then they did not seem to like each other too much either, or even themselves for that matter.
It is good to remember that these are the thoughts of a character, who, over the course of the novel, is also shown to find glimpses of sympathy for the people he initially despises. Things are not just black and white, quite literally, and this is what Khan explores in The Study Circle, a novel largely built around conversations between different people in London. Included are protesters from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as members of the eponymous Koran study circle. Some sections I found predictable (Ishaq is carried off by security at a conference when he contests the speakers’ ineffectual blabber along the lines of “we need to work together for a brighter future”), while some other dialogue was thrilling to follow and fittingly shook me a little as a white reader. As an outside observer not living in the UK, I enjoyed the ways that Khan captures the wide array of Muslims living in London:
Taking in the full vista, he could see all the varieties of Muslim. To an acute observer, a believer’s choice of clothing and grooming habits helped indicate their religious and political leanings. For men: length and type of beard, whether they were clean shaven, the presence of turban or type of hat, a full face of hair, a shaven moustache line, wearing leather socks, wearing trousers that stopped above the ankle, western clothing, type of foreign clothing, were they openly wearing something silk or gold. For women: presence of a head or face covering, if so how they wore it, was it patterned or plain, an abaya or a burka or skirt, use of jewellery and make up. And so it went on and on. All formats in all types of configurations were present, but nowadays it was just a free-for-all. Cultures within cultures, a din of apparel and clashing accoutrements like some mystifying border town.
What signals to me that The Study Circle is a debut work are the occasional overwritten parts, by which I mean the successive repetition of a sentence with different wording, like here: “They were truly assimilated, in that they would make wonderful British politicians. They were better off in their natural abode, the Houses of Parliament.” There is nothing necessarily wrong with this (I think it mirrors the ways our consciousness works, rewording thoughts in order to make sense of reality), but it does add up and lengthen the novel to over three hundred pages, while I could vision it as a sharper whole if just trimmed a little more. In many ways I find it more successful and, somehow, more real than Gunaratne’s novel, which felt constricted in its form. The Study Circle is a free-flowing novel of many ideas: there is relatively little to follow in terms of plot, but Khan writes good dialogue and interesting characters, resulting in a text that kept me intrigued throughout. I’m sensing Khan is a writer to look out for – his honesty is surely a welcome addition to the current climate of self-centered literary fiction, slowly crumbling as our world is changing.
Written for the Helsinki Book Review.
Gunaratne’s novel is easily comparable to Khan’s The Study Circle. Whereas the former navigates around the northern parts of London, Khan depicts South London with great detail. He charts the experience of living in estate housing around Tooting and Streatham, and follows a group of characters in an increasingly hostile environment where, for instance, the English Defence League is gaining ground. Ishaq is a university student who’s not sure whether to pursue a doctorate when an auspicious but morally questionable opportunity arises; Shams is looking for work which turns out to be quite a challenge for someone with a background like his. Khan’s writing is often atmospheric, not rushing to move the plot forward as the protagonists move in the city:
For the first time in its history the southern side of the river was rapidly gentrifying, to mirror the north, but echoes of what had been still lingered. It held narrow streets that had once hosted boozy inns, whorehouses, docks, and a wretched prison. He wondered whether people from that other time looked across the water in the same way. Unimaginable wealth poured through those offices, in instruments and methods that the general public could hardly imagine. Everything was centred around servicing the needs of those few. Maybe that was the real London.
These descriptions are accompanied by incisive critiques of white, well-off Londoners, as, for instance, Ishaq notes:
As if they got everything right? All that wealth and the English were still miserable bastards. They had lost any religion; they poured scorn on any spirituality. The void couldn’t be filled by intellectualism, as they distrusted that too. They had no real shared culture across their classes except for crap television and consuming in excess. They were inhospitable to foreigners, sometimes to the point of being hateful. But then they did not seem to like each other too much either, or even themselves for that matter.
It is good to remember that these are the thoughts of a character, who, over the course of the novel, is also shown to find glimpses of sympathy for the people he initially despises. Things are not just black and white, quite literally, and this is what Khan explores in The Study Circle, a novel largely built around conversations between different people in London. Included are protesters from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as members of the eponymous Koran study circle. Some sections I found predictable (Ishaq is carried off by security at a conference when he contests the speakers’ ineffectual blabber along the lines of “we need to work together for a brighter future”), while some other dialogue was thrilling to follow and fittingly shook me a little as a white reader. As an outside observer not living in the UK, I enjoyed the ways that Khan captures the wide array of Muslims living in London:
Taking in the full vista, he could see all the varieties of Muslim. To an acute observer, a believer’s choice of clothing and grooming habits helped indicate their religious and political leanings. For men: length and type of beard, whether they were clean shaven, the presence of turban or type of hat, a full face of hair, a shaven moustache line, wearing leather socks, wearing trousers that stopped above the ankle, western clothing, type of foreign clothing, were they openly wearing something silk or gold. For women: presence of a head or face covering, if so how they wore it, was it patterned or plain, an abaya or a burka or skirt, use of jewellery and make up. And so it went on and on. All formats in all types of configurations were present, but nowadays it was just a free-for-all. Cultures within cultures, a din of apparel and clashing accoutrements like some mystifying border town.
What signals to me that The Study Circle is a debut work are the occasional overwritten parts, by which I mean the successive repetition of a sentence with different wording, like here: “They were truly assimilated, in that they would make wonderful British politicians. They were better off in their natural abode, the Houses of Parliament.” There is nothing necessarily wrong with this (I think it mirrors the ways our consciousness works, rewording thoughts in order to make sense of reality), but it does add up and lengthen the novel to over three hundred pages, while I could vision it as a sharper whole if just trimmed a little more. In many ways I find it more successful and, somehow, more real than Gunaratne’s novel, which felt constricted in its form. The Study Circle is a free-flowing novel of many ideas: there is relatively little to follow in terms of plot, but Khan writes good dialogue and interesting characters, resulting in a text that kept me intrigued throughout. I’m sensing Khan is a writer to look out for – his honesty is surely a welcome addition to the current climate of self-centered literary fiction, slowly crumbling as our world is changing.
Written for the Helsinki Book Review.
November 23, 2018
The next time you mentally consider a community or group as like minded and one size-fits all in regard to their values, pause and read this book. Every possibly shade of experience of growing up in Britain as a Muslim is portrayed here. Like any sizable community, the views held are diverse and that extends to identity itself. No one voice can speak for every Muslim and no one stereotype could possibly stand for all Muslims.
The action scenes, of a police stop and search, a knife-wielding aggressor and a full-scale race riot, are more involving to read than the long discussions between characters on their view of what it means to be a Muslim in the UK, And interestingly, I found the portrayal of class and poverty as a cause of grievance, much more sharply focused than other factors such as faith, feeding into people's sense of their own identity. A book anyone who has ever bothered to spout an opinion on Muslims and the Islamic religion itself, should be made to read.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_QJ...
The action scenes, of a police stop and search, a knife-wielding aggressor and a full-scale race riot, are more involving to read than the long discussions between characters on their view of what it means to be a Muslim in the UK, And interestingly, I found the portrayal of class and poverty as a cause of grievance, much more sharply focused than other factors such as faith, feeding into people's sense of their own identity. A book anyone who has ever bothered to spout an opinion on Muslims and the Islamic religion itself, should be made to read.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_QJ...
October 16, 2018
“There was something fundamental at stake. Deep-seated ways of looking at the world that were at odds.”
The Study Circle, by Haroun Khan, is set in a South London housing estate of graffitied tower blocks where the simmering resentments of a second generation immigrant Muslim community are approaching boiling point. Harassed by the police on the streets and passed over for employment due to their names, the young men are urged by their parents and religious leaders to remain calm and obliging. The story is a powerful evocation of the day to day challenges which make this entreaty such a tough ask.
Ishaq, Marwane and Shams have been friends since school. The former two now attend a good university while Shams struggles to find a job. After several false starts he agrees to run deliveries for Mujahid, a local hard man and ex-convict trying to provide for his family any way he can. Sham’s new role brings him into contact with vocal supporters of the EDL. When the police and then a man claiming to work for MI5 question Shams he must make difficult choices.
For several years Ishaq has regularly attended a Study Circle. Here he and like minded peers from his community listen to a speaker, Ayub, as he reads from revered texts, and talks through the basic tenets of the Islamic faith. Ishaq wishes to be a good Muslim, striving to improve piety and character. His ideals are tested by the realities of blatant animosity that impacts his day to day experiences. Government, the media and those in positions of authority are increasingly strident in their prejudices and fear of followers of Islam.
Ishaq’s parents wish him to complete his degree, get a job, marry, have children and make a good life for himself by keeping his head down and acting compliant. Ishaq is questioning if he can live this way. On the estate are the likes of Mujahid who believes power and thereby rights and respect can only be earned through open displays of aggressive strength. The behaviour of the police and security services suggests they think along similar lines.
As a reader it took some time to engage with the tale being told. The incremental plot progression is cushioned by lengthy sections of dialogue. These conversations are the beating heart of a story whose aim appears to be to increase understanding of Muslim attitudes and resentments in Britain. There are misapprehensions on both sides. What is offered is nuances to counter the broad brush strokes more widely reported.
The young Muslim men observe the white people they regard as oppressors. They decry the drinking and gambling just as the white people they encounter decry their insistence on halal meat and proscribed attire. Ishaq recounts overhearing elderly neighbours share a moment of tenderness commenting that he had, up until this point, been unaware that white families were capable of being like this together – that they could ever act as his family did.
What comes to the fore is how little either side understands the other. The Islamic community preaches peace and patience yet there is so much anger boiling over at each provocation. The men on both sides resort to violence to protect what they regard as their innate rights. The white people demand assimilation while the Muslim community wish to be left to live according to their beliefs. Within each side are the few whose arguments are fuelled by hate.
The immigrant parents, who moved to Britain for a better way of life, berate their children for not making more of the opportunities thereby offered. The children berate their parents for not understanding how frustrated they feel at being treated as a threat by a white community granted the power to subjugate. Frustration, fear and aggression build to confrontations that, inevitably, spiral out of control.
Misunderstood prejudices explored include: traditional attire, including the head coverings worn by some Muslim women; FGM; the treatment of child abusers; arranged marriage. I would have liked more prominence given to female characters but this is a story of young men fighting for a place in the world they believe they deserve. Ishaq is torn between demands for loyalty to those he has grown up with, and the chance of a better way but only for himself.
This is a carefully crafted story on the reality of living as a Muslim man in working class Britain. The tinder of cultural and political persecution, enacted in the name of national security, builds dangerously in a community whose choices are limited by racial discrimination. The schisms created by interpretations of religious teachings add a volatile flame.
A story that works to provide a fair representation of both sides of a serious contemporary issue. This was an eye-opening, searingly relevant read.
The Study Circle, by Haroun Khan, is set in a South London housing estate of graffitied tower blocks where the simmering resentments of a second generation immigrant Muslim community are approaching boiling point. Harassed by the police on the streets and passed over for employment due to their names, the young men are urged by their parents and religious leaders to remain calm and obliging. The story is a powerful evocation of the day to day challenges which make this entreaty such a tough ask.
Ishaq, Marwane and Shams have been friends since school. The former two now attend a good university while Shams struggles to find a job. After several false starts he agrees to run deliveries for Mujahid, a local hard man and ex-convict trying to provide for his family any way he can. Sham’s new role brings him into contact with vocal supporters of the EDL. When the police and then a man claiming to work for MI5 question Shams he must make difficult choices.
For several years Ishaq has regularly attended a Study Circle. Here he and like minded peers from his community listen to a speaker, Ayub, as he reads from revered texts, and talks through the basic tenets of the Islamic faith. Ishaq wishes to be a good Muslim, striving to improve piety and character. His ideals are tested by the realities of blatant animosity that impacts his day to day experiences. Government, the media and those in positions of authority are increasingly strident in their prejudices and fear of followers of Islam.
Ishaq’s parents wish him to complete his degree, get a job, marry, have children and make a good life for himself by keeping his head down and acting compliant. Ishaq is questioning if he can live this way. On the estate are the likes of Mujahid who believes power and thereby rights and respect can only be earned through open displays of aggressive strength. The behaviour of the police and security services suggests they think along similar lines.
As a reader it took some time to engage with the tale being told. The incremental plot progression is cushioned by lengthy sections of dialogue. These conversations are the beating heart of a story whose aim appears to be to increase understanding of Muslim attitudes and resentments in Britain. There are misapprehensions on both sides. What is offered is nuances to counter the broad brush strokes more widely reported.
The young Muslim men observe the white people they regard as oppressors. They decry the drinking and gambling just as the white people they encounter decry their insistence on halal meat and proscribed attire. Ishaq recounts overhearing elderly neighbours share a moment of tenderness commenting that he had, up until this point, been unaware that white families were capable of being like this together – that they could ever act as his family did.
What comes to the fore is how little either side understands the other. The Islamic community preaches peace and patience yet there is so much anger boiling over at each provocation. The men on both sides resort to violence to protect what they regard as their innate rights. The white people demand assimilation while the Muslim community wish to be left to live according to their beliefs. Within each side are the few whose arguments are fuelled by hate.
The immigrant parents, who moved to Britain for a better way of life, berate their children for not making more of the opportunities thereby offered. The children berate their parents for not understanding how frustrated they feel at being treated as a threat by a white community granted the power to subjugate. Frustration, fear and aggression build to confrontations that, inevitably, spiral out of control.
Misunderstood prejudices explored include: traditional attire, including the head coverings worn by some Muslim women; FGM; the treatment of child abusers; arranged marriage. I would have liked more prominence given to female characters but this is a story of young men fighting for a place in the world they believe they deserve. Ishaq is torn between demands for loyalty to those he has grown up with, and the chance of a better way but only for himself.
This is a carefully crafted story on the reality of living as a Muslim man in working class Britain. The tinder of cultural and political persecution, enacted in the name of national security, builds dangerously in a community whose choices are limited by racial discrimination. The schisms created by interpretations of religious teachings add a volatile flame.
A story that works to provide a fair representation of both sides of a serious contemporary issue. This was an eye-opening, searingly relevant read.
July 11, 2020
A story that needs and deserves to be told. An eye-opening story that really helps you to understand modern England. It should be essential reading.
The second half of the books is much better written than the first. It could really have done with the writer going back over the first half once he had found his feet with the narrative. And wow, it could have done with some proofreading for typos and errors.
The second half of the books is much better written than the first. It could really have done with the writer going back over the first half once he had found his feet with the narrative. And wow, it could have done with some proofreading for typos and errors.
October 17, 2018
It would be a lie to say that The Study Circle is an easy book — it isn’t — but it is an enthralling one. At its heart, it does what great writing does best. It tells an uncomfortable truth about the world we live in, and revels in the power of sharing our stories. Haroun Khan has a striking talent for making the reader empathise with each of his characters, and his debut is an arresting and absorbing portrait of the modern world, which many of us won’t have realised we needed to read.
January 17, 2019
4.5/5 Stars. Book review to come.
July 3, 2020
Powerful and tells a story a lot of people need to hear.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews