The Boy at the Back of the Class Study Guide

Onjali Q. Raúf was born in 1981 in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England. Growing up as a British Bangladeshi child, she faced both racism and sexism. These experiences motivated her to write stories that not only challenge those issues but also feature characters who look like her. Raúf went to school in London and studied English literature at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. She also completed her masters in Women’s Studies at Oxford University. In 2011, she founded a not-for-profit organization called Making Herstory, which fights against human trafficking and the abuse of women and girls. A few years later, Raúf also established O’s Refugee Aid Team, which delivers food, emergency supplies, and other aid to refugees in France. To raise more awareness about refugees in the UK, Raúf wrote her debut novel, The Boy at the Back of the Class. Published in 2018, the book received the 2019 Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story and the 2019 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. As of 2025, Raúf has written nine more books. Her latest publication is a picture book, The Girl at the Front of the Class, released in September 2024.

In The Boy at the Back of the Class, Ahmet is a young refugee who has fled from war in Syria. His experiences of witnessing violence at home, being forced to leave everything he knows behind, and staying in various refugee camps before reaching the UK are all based on the real-world Syrian refugee crisis. The crisis began in 2011 after civil war erupted in Syria. Millions of Syrians fled the conflict, seeking safety in nearby countries—including Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan—and also across Europe. In the UK, specifically, thousands of Syrian refugees have been granted asylum. As of 2025, the displacement crisis is still ongoing, and many refugees face poverty, isolation, racism, and other forms of discrimination in the same places where they hope to receive aid and protection. Additionally, refugees are impacted by government policies that restrict access to asylum and limit the protections they can receive. According to the UN Refugee Agency, the Illegal Migration Act passed in 2023 by the UK Parliament is one such law that infringes on the inherent human rights of refugees. Nevertheless, numerous organizations are dedicated to helping refugees, such as Refugee Action in the UK, the US-based Karam Foundation, the International Rescue Committee, and the UN Refugee Agency.

The Boy at the Back of the Class makes numerous references to The Adventures of Tintin, a comic series by Hergé. Tintin is a reporter who travels around the world, solves mysteries, chases villains, and explores new places. His escapades inspire Alexa—the protagonist of The Boy at the Back of the Class—to be just as brave as Tintin and to go on her own adventures. As a sequel to The Boy at the Back of the Class, Raúf wrote The Day We Met the Queen, which recounts how Alexa and her best friend Ahmet travel to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen of England. Raúf explores themes of friendship and kindness again in the picture book The Girl at the Front of the Class, which is about a young girl’s efforts to befriend a new student in her class who’s a refugee. Another book similar to The Boy at the Back of the Class is No Ballet Shoes in Syria by Catherine Bruton. Bruton’s novel tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Aya who seeks asylum in Britain with her mother and brother after fleeing from Syria. As Aya excels in her ballet classes, she and her family also have to fight to stay in their new home and reunite with Aya’s father, who was separated from them.