A small world: Shibboleth, by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, reviewed

Spectator

5 hours ago

Two shibboleths are treated in Thomas Peermohamed Lambert's audacious debut novel. The first is the University of Oxford; the second is the Israeli-Palestinian controversy. 'It is the great issue, isn't it? The great shibboleth.'
Edward, the protagonist, is a state-educated undergraduate whose connection to Islam is a Muslim grandfather from Zanzibar. He finds himself in a world of wealthy public school boys with 'a social calendar, rugby fixtures and sexual assault hearings', and girls from sister schools, 'fully recovered from eating disorders'.
This fictitious world is outdated, but Lambert's satirical touch still hits the mark about 'the creatures of the written word [the university] specialised in churning out, as if the country needed more of them'. There is the statue on the facade of one of the colleges of 'some monocled old colonialist'. An aged don, whose reputation was established many decades earlier with an article for the London Review of Books, will probably die in college and 'get transubstantiated into a conference room or essay prize'.
Edward's fellow students are ciphers. There is Youssef, his close friend, an African Muslim 'with a splash of Blue Nile' in his veins; Liberty, an activist from a well-off black family; Angelica, a privileged white liberal; and Rachel, a Jewish girl who feels herself an outsider and with whom Edward has an affair. There is little depth to any of them, but they serve their purpose. The narrative points up the patronising ways of the wealthy and the tension between Israel and Palestine. In the small world of college politics, Liberty is told that she exploits her role as a black woman surrounded by rugby players who 'bounce around like wrecking balls'. The verdict is that 'in Oxford, being black has helped; being Jewish hasn't'.
The writing is full of memes, tropes, mythemes and paradigms. There are longueurs in the debate about Israel and Palestine, but valid points are made. Rachel claims that she risks a charge of anti-Semitism if she asserts: 'I suspect that killing everyone in the Occupied Territories might not be an excellent long-term strategy for Jews in Israel.'
This challenging satire that declares 'Oxford is a dream' should not be missed, because today's city with its 59 EDI staff is a nightmare.