A credible portrayal of systemic inequality. I enjoyed the realism in this novel.
Feature image credit: Hardie Grant Publishing
Learned Behaviours is Zeynab Gamieldien’s second novel and begins when a figure from the protagonist Zaid’s past, Amira, the sister of his best friend Hass from high school, comes to visit him at work. She has recently found her brother’s diary and comes to Zaid for answers about its contents. She hopes the diary, along with his insight, can help explain why her brother was arrested for murder and potentially prove his innocence.
There are 32 chapters in this novel, and it has an alternating timeline structure. It starts and ends in the present, taking us through the period where Zaid is forced to acknowledge and reconcile with his past. Author Zeynab Gamieldien, inaugural winner of the 2022 Westwords/Ultimo Prize, wanted to capture how societal advantage and disadvantage affects a person’s life trajectory.
The alternating timeline takes us back to his formative years to show how the past shaped him and those around him, why he kept it hidden, and how it has been an ongoing struggle until now. By contrasting Zaid’s present life among the privileged, a place where he struggles to feel at home, to his less affluent upbringing in Western Sydney, Gamieldien not only gives depth to his character but also well illustrates the social effects of privilege and disadvantage.
Although the ongoing contrasts between the two worlds kept me quite attuned to the realities which Zaid experiences, there were other aspects of the story that made it feel quite real. We hear how Zaid feels inside when he code-switches, what it is like for a person who has economically and educationally moved classes, and about all the everyday things that privileged people take for granted, such as knowing how to swim and having connections in high places.
The exchanges between the students and the teacher Mr Tanner show how children from disadvantaged backgrounds can sometimes see things more clearly than those with privilege. They can spot pretence easily because they haven’t been taught to hide it, nor has it been hidden from them. However, given their conditioning, and the challenges and pressures faced when navigating disadvantage, all that’s been left unsaid often just remains unsaid.
The hardest part about reading this novel was that Zaid isn’t as likeable as Hass, who endured the most and was also the one who had the greatest potential. It is Hass that I would want to rally for in this type of story. Unfortunately, instead, he illustrates how powerless someone from a disadvantaged background can feel under the weight of stigma, and how this can lead them to give up the fight — or not even begin it in the first place.
Although the novel starts off a little slow, the pace soon quickens, and it is so well layered it becomes hard to put down toward the end. Having grown up in Sydney, I strongly connected with this story, and the characters within it felt very real. I quite liked how the author included labels such as ‘The Area’ as if the barriers between suburbs marked the passage into another world. This is a brilliant book to understand the inner workings of inequality.
Reviewed by Rebecca Wu
The views expressed in this review belong to the author and not Glam Adelaide, its affiliates, or employees.
Distributed by: Hardie Grant
Released: July 2025
RRP: $34.99
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