The past is calling him home ...


As a prospective barrister, Zaid Saban is on the cusp of achieving everything he has dreamed of. His social and professional world is far removed from his schoolyard days in the suburbs of western Sydney, even more far removed from the traumatic events of his final year of school in which best friend, Hass, was arrested for murder.

Zaid thinks he has put all this behind him. But when Hass’s sister, Amira, finds him and asks him to read her brother’s diary, Zaid is pulled back to the very world he had left behind. Is it possible that Hass was innocent? As Amira and Zaid seek to solve the mystery of what happened all those years ago, Zaid is forced to confront the ugliness of the past and what it means for who he is today.


‘Storytelling at its most gripping, a gaze at its most unflinching... A mystery that twists the genre’s tropes to excavate injustices and the mythologies of guilt and innocence that fuel them—layer by layer, truth by uncomfortable truth.’ SARA M SALEH, author of Songs for the Dead and the Living

‘A clear-eyed and deeply moving exploration of past injustice, privilege, and belonging. Zeynab Gamieldien lays bare what it is to inhabit two worlds in contemporary Australia: slipping in and out of your skin to navigate the spaces you are granted entry to and perpetually second-guessing the rules of admittance.’ DINUKA MCKENZIE, author of The Torrent

‘Compelling, complex and even chilling. Learned Behaviours is a concentrated look into the murderous cycle of stereotypes. Yet, within its pages of crime and consequence lies a quiet defiance – the possibility of unlearning, reclaiming, and rupturing that very cycle. A thrilling and thought-provoking read.’ WINNIE DUNN, author of Dirt Poor Islanders

‘In a moving and compelling portrait of how we learn and unlearn what we think we know of the world, Learned Behaviours succeeds as a mystery novel, a meditation on class, drive and prejudice, and as a story of love and connection. Gamieldien’s characters, so intimately and honestly drawn, will get under your skin and stay there.’ MARTINE KROPKOWSKI, author of Everywhere We Look

‘A compelling new novel filled with a genuine sense of mystery, set against a western Sydney backdrop.’ AMANI HAYDAR, author of The Mother Wound