IF YOU DON'T KNOW ME BY NOW by Sathnam Sanghera: Review by Imran Ahmed

Just hours after Sathnam Sanghera's father married his newly-imported bride, he slapped her in the face. The reason? She was sitting in his brother's place on the sofa.

Such was the ethos of the place and time that no one suspected this behaviour was a symptom of mental illness. It was more a case of: 'Steady on, old chap, she just got here.' Sanghera must be a time lord — or, at the very least, a time tailor — so seamlessly does he weave together disparate strands of his life from different decades. One moment he is a yuppie journalist breaking up with another of his white (this is significant) girlfriends; next he's a teenager secretly plotting to have his traditionally untouched Sikh hair cut like a 'normal' boy.

By IMRAN AHMAD - More by this author »

[for the rest of the review click on the heading]