The English Boys

From the Desmond Elliott-longlisted author of Asghar and Zahra, an ambitious, witty and tender novel set in NW London at the turn of the millennium, about two Muslim teenagers trying to understand the world at a time when the definition of 'Englishness' is in flux.

Adam Din hasn't spoken to Suleyman Karim since they were at school together in Harrow twenty years earlier. But when he is mysteriously invited to a Sufi lodge in Cyprus on an old school message board, he imagines it can only be his former best friend who will meet him there. And perhaps he will find the answers to what really happened between 1999 and 2001 at their London sixth form - and what has led them down such divergent paths.

At the turn of the millennium, Harrow High is a hotbed of romantic intrigue and bubbling racial tension. Between his strict religious upbringing at home, and the cigarettes, Sony Walkmans and copies of Loaded at school, Adam is just trying to keep his head down, dodging the bullies as well as the teachers who want to mould him in their own image. His life is transformed when he meets Suleyman, an eccentric teenager obsessed with that quintessential Englishman Samuel Johnson, and who is defiant of bullies and teachers alike.

His friendship with Suleyman opens up new possibilies for Adam, a future beyond his father's travel agency. But as Adam's horizons broaden, uncomfortable truths at home begin to surface.

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