Zaiba Malik grew up in Bradford, in the heart of the Pakistani community which gave the city one of its nicknames, Bradistan. Her father prayed five times a day and she stayed up with him throughout the night during Ramadan, reading the Koran. At school, she was the only girl in her class from a Pakistani family. She left home, went to university and became a journalist.

Her memoir describes a world already disappearing into social histories. The Pakistani migrants of the 1960s were far from well-off and Malik's father worked ten-hour shifts at a textile mill. Malik lists the narrow confines of a home life she felt unable to talk about at school: there were no holidays, with the exception of her father's annual pilgrimage to Mecca; an elderly, disabled uncle lived with the family; and the only time Malik went out at weekends was to visit WH Smith with her father.

Growing up involved a struggle between irreconcilable identities, a process she describes with humour and insight. "I knew I was a Muslim long before I knew I was British," she writes. "And I knew I was Pakistani long before I knew I was English."

The family spoke Punjabi at home, shopped at halal butchers and treated authority figures with exaggerated respect. The only visitors to the house were "men with baggy white trousers and little caps and women with baggy white trousers and headscarves". Older women known as "the Aunties" policed the community, expressing disapproval if they spotted someone's son or daughter adopting non-Pakistani habits.

Jag alskar den har boken just nu. Ligger helt ratt i min tid att lasa den. Small Heath som ligger 5 min med bil/buss fran oss ar precis ett sadant Asian community med halal butchers, somali restaurants, supermarkets som heter "in Allah we trust" och islam schools. Det fascinerade mig anda sedan i vintras nar vi flyttade hit och bussen korde langsamt pa den langa gatan dar inga bilregler verkade galla, snon lag i drivor, det blev morkt vid 16.30 och det var sa tattbyggt och trangt overallt att jag kunde lasa tavlan med menyn inne pa ett av alla sisha lounges nar bussen stannade till. Ar uppvuxen i en av Sveriges rikaste, mest borgerligt styrda kommuner som "tar in" 10 invandrare per ar. Det har ar fascinerande. Och det ar inget Hammarkullen eller Hjallbo, det ar nagot helt annat...

Rolig episod i boken nar Zaiba gar pa the Hacienda i Mancester och forfasas over precis allting, samt undrar varfor alla dricker vatten i baren, "didn't people go to clubs to get drunk?"