'Ahmad's piercing storytelling cuts away at the lace and trimmings of race relations in Australia today. No one who reads The Lebs deserves to come out unscathed.' - The Saturday Paper 'The author never lets his superb command of idiom or his eye for the absurd overwhelm a deeply felt exploration of the hurt and damage that can come from encounters with the Australian Other. 'The Lebs is a strong and resonant novel that deserves to be widely read.' - Weekend Australian The Lebs is a strong and resonant novel that deserves to be widely read. 'an open-eyed and highly charismatic novel broiling with fight, tenderness and ambition.' - Big Issue He is a romantic in a sea of hypermasculinity.īani must come to terms with his place in this hostile, hopeless world, while dreaming of so much more. His second novel, The Lebs (Hachette, 2018) received the 2019 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. Edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad, awardwinning author of The Lebs. Mohammed’s debut novel, The Tribe (Giramondo, 2014), won the 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists of the Year Award. Though he's a Leb and they control the school, Bani feels at odds with the other students, who just don't seem to care. In this unflinching new anthology, eleven of Australia’s most daring writers of colour provide a glimpse of Australia in the year 2050. I hold their anticipation for three seconds, and then, while they're all ablaze, I say out loud, 'I do think I'm better.'Īs far as Bani Adam is concerned Punchbowl Boys is the arse end of the earth.

They all go quiet and wait for me to explain myself, redeem myself, pull my shirt out, rejoin the pack. 'Bani Adam thinks he's better than us!' they say over and over until finally I shout back, 'Shut up, I have something to say!'

WINNER OF THE NSW PREMIERS LITERARY AWARDS MULTICULTURAL NSW AWARD 2019 by Rand Al-Hadethi ApMichael Mohammed Ahmed always has to take a moment when he buys a coffee. FINALIST FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARDS 2019 Lebanese-Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmed discusses growing up amidst racism, and the importance of books in dismantling narratives built by the Western gaze.

The Lebs by Michael Mohammed Ahmad