So here’s a neat bit of Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ news! Sabba Khan was one of the earliest prospects to be listed as part of our mentorship programme back in our third intake in 2017. Since then Sabba’s graphic memoir The Roles We Play – “a vivid snapshot of contemporary British Asian life… investigat[ing] the complex shifts experienced by different generations within migrant communities” – has gone onto huge critical acclaim.
It was shortlisted for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition in 2018 with Myriad going on to publish it, was the Broken Frontier Breakout Talent Award winner in 2021, and won the Jhalak Prize in 2022. And in the same year it was picked up by publisher Street Noise Books and published in the US as What is Home, Mum?. You can read my review of it here at BF and enjoy my most recent interview with Sabba here on the site where we discuss the book’s creation in detail.
Sabba with BF Editor-in-Chief at the Broken Frontier ’10 Years of the Six to Watch’ party at Gosh! Comics in August 2024
All of which leads into the news that The Roles We Play is now a set text for the Cambridge OCR English Language and Literature ‘A’ Level. It will be part of teaching for students from September 2026. This is wonderful to hear on multiple levels: an acknowledgment of this incredible work from Sabba, a vitally important piece of socially relevant work getting its place in our education system in the UK, and recognition of comics as literature. Much deserved on all counts!
Visit Sabba Khan’s website here
Blog post by Andy Oliver
