The Khan

Written By Linda Malek

The Khan by Saima Mir
Reviewed by Mimi
📘📘📘📘

This is so different to anything I have ever read! The Khan is the patriarch of an organised crime group running a city in the North. Jia Khan is the daughter who is given the responsibility to take over when her father is murdered. It’s a role and a life she ran away from, preferring to be a criminal defence lawyer in London. As the story develops, we discover she has run away from so much more than supporting a criminal empire. There are family dynamics and community politics that all feed into her self imposed exile. On her return, she is forced to confront all of these issues.

For a lot of this novel, I wasn't sure if I liked Jia and that's what made it interesting. There were moments, for example when she was standing up to men who believed a woman shouldn't be holding that post, that I really wanted her to succeed but in other moments, such as when she was interacting with her husband, her selfishness was jarring. She was a realistically flawed character with an equal amount of confidence and uncertainty. She suddenly had to go from a solo way of living to being looked to for help by everyone she ever held dear.

What becomes clear is that she does really have to fight to earn the respect of everyone around her and the way she gets there is probably the most enjoyable part of reading this book. There are tense moments, conflicts and revelations which constantly move the story in different directions.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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