She has described how one of her grandfathers was a Kashmiri who jumped ship in Melbourne, while the other was a Punjabi small business man who came in the wake of the Afghan camel drivers, who helped to facilitate access to the Australian interior.
Her first book, Caravanserai, portrayed the lives of Australian Muslims.
Her second book, Broken Bangles, focused on Muslim women in South Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh).
[4] Deen's 2008 book, The Jihad Seminar is about Melbourne's first religious hate speech case, (UWA Press).
In 2013 The Crescent and the Pen was extensively rewritten and released as On the Trail of Taslim in paperback by Indian Ocean Press.