Song of Gulzarina - Paperback

by Tariq Mehmood (Author)

Tariq Mehmood's Song of Gulzarina is a highly involving novel which looks at the life of Saleem Khan, who migrates from Pakistan to Bradford in the 1960s full of expectation and ends up contemplating suicide bombing in 21st-century Manchester. Mehmood deals with some of the really big questions of our time - race, class, oppression, empire and war - through the eyes of a failed father and lover who nonetheless gains our sympathies.
- Lindsay German, Counterfire

Mehmood is unswerving in his depiction of the racism that existed in Yorkshire mills in the 1970s as well as today's virulent Islamophobia. .... Mehmood's novel is polemical and full of black humour. ... Terror, both state-sponsored and the work of violent extremists, exists and has to be confronted. This is one of the most textured novels I have read about such violence. - Claire Chambers, Huffington Post

On the outset, then, Tariq Mehmood's Song of Gulzarina may seem like a predictable political commentary-cum-fable warning against the constraints of ideology and the violence of imperialism. However, it is both the author's and the characters' acute self-awareness of the familiarity of the plot, and their insistence on stressing the nuances of Saleem's journey rather than the gravity of its end, that make for a compelling read.

- Abeera Khan Kohl, Journal for Body and Gender Research
Song of Gulzarina is a highly impressionable book, for it speaks directly and powerfully to the humanness of the reader. Song of Gulzarina is an absolute
worthy read.

- Lema Abeng-Nsah Dunia, The Reader's Magazine
Tariq Mehmood has written a powerful tale and his voice in the current political climate is important. Through a strong sense of the spoken word, an under-heard narrative gains momentum. This book is pure entertainment but it is also a cautionary tale. A question embedded in a Song. What happens when people are ignored and suppressed for too long? Where does that energy go? It is the reader's gain that this particular writer has put his own spark into Song of Gulzarina. -J Rose, Muscat Tales

Author Biography

Tariq Mehmood is an award winning novelist and documentary film-maker. His first novel, Hand On the Sun (London: Penguin Books, 1983), dealt with the experience of the resistance to racism by young migrant to the UK of the 1970s and 1980s. His second novel, While There is Light (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003), was set against the backdrop of the case of the 'Bradford 12', where 12 young men who defended their community were charged with conspiracy offences. His young adult novel, You're Not Proper, a story of two girls struggling in a town seething with Islamophobia (London: Hope Road, 2015), won the Francis Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award. He is the co-director of the multiple award-winning documentary Injustice, a story about people who have died in British police custody. He is also co-director of other documentaries including Defeat of the Champions and Who Polices the Police. Tariq teaches at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon. He blogs at: https: //tmehmood.wordpress.co