Unimagined – Imran Ahmad

It was dovegreyreader that first introduced me to Imran Ahmad and I'm so glad that she did!

Last week Imran wrote most of one of her posts and as a result I had to go out and buy a copy of his book that afternoon.

Unimagined: A Muslim Boy Meets the West is quite simply a story of Imran's life as a Muslim man growing up in the UK. It starts when he is aged "pre-zero" and his family were living in Pakistan. The first bit that really made me smile was the description of him being robbed of the title of the Karachi 'Bonnie Baby' due to "blatant nepotism" (the organiser's child taking first place)!

When Imran was one his parents moved to England followng the British government's migration programme for those living in the Commonwealth. Their arrival in Manchester came as a bit of a shock following life in Pakistan – they were not considered to be educated professionals in England, despite having been before.

The family had moved down to the South East by the time Imran started school and he was something of a swot whilst there. He easily achieved high grades, but also wore his school uniform with pride – something that attracted attention from the school bullies.

A James Bond distraction whilst studying for his A-levels prevented Imran from following his initial plans to study medicine, but instead allowed him to travel north of the border to study at Stirling University to study chemistry. I laughed out loud though when Imran, already set on going to Stirling, exclaims "I look Stirling up in the atlas and discover that it is in Scotland. I never knew that!"

We follow him through his university career and the various highs and lows that it brings. One theme that Imran does keep coming back to is that of religion. As the book takes us through his life Imran's understanding of his religion, and those of others around him, develops and the reader is taken through all this and I found myself learning as Imran did. I learnt more about Muslims from reading this book that from anything I've ever read in newspapers or magazines.

The style of Imran's writing is quite unique and his strong character comes over so easily. Despite discussing religion, which many see as a very heavy subject, the book has a light tone throughout and is a very easy read. One other little thing that I really liked was the fact that at the bottom of each page, next to the page number, is a small note giving his age at the time and the year. It really helps to the reader to, at a glance, put into context what he is writing about against world events at the time.

Dovegreyreader called Unimagined her 2007 her favourite non-fiction read of 2007 and I can definitely understand why. (I'm just annoyed that I didn't discover it until 2008!) I do strongly recommend reading this, or even buying someone a copy as a Christmas present – it's a really great read!