The Lebs, Michael Mohammed Ahmad
The Lebs, Michael Mohammed Ahmad
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The Lebs
Miles Franklin Literary Award Finalist

Author: Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Narrator: Hazem Shammas

Unabridged: 6 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/02/2019

Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARDS 2019
WINNER OF THE NSW PREMIERS LITERARY AWARDS MULTICULTURAL NSW AWARD 2019

'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!'

They all go quiet and wait for me to explain myself, redeem myself, pull my shirt out, rejoin the pack. I hold their anticipation for three seconds, and then, while they're all ablaze, I say out loud, 'I do think I'm better.'

As far as Bani Adam is concerned Punchbowl Boys is the arse end of the earth. 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. He is a romantic in a sea of hypermasculinity.

Bani must come to terms with his place in this hostile, hopeless world, while dreaming of so much more.

Praise for The Lebs:

'an open-eyed and highly charismatic novel broiling with fight, tenderness and ambition.' - Big Issue

'The Lebs is a strong and resonant novel that deserves to be widely read.' - Weekend Australian

'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. No one who reads The Lebs deserves to come out unscathed.' - The Saturday Paper

'Ahmad's piercing storytelling cuts away at the lace and trimmings of race relations in Australia today.' - The Lifted Brow

About Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Michael Mohammed Ahmad is the founding director of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and editor of the critically acclaimed anthology After Australia (Affirm Press, 2020). Mohammed's debut novel, The Tribe (Giramondo, 2014), won the 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists of the Year Award. His second novel, The Lebs (Hachette Australia, 2018), won the 2019 NSW Premier's Multicultural Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Mohammed received his Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University in 2017.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Neale on May 24, 2019

You know things are less than ideal at a school when the new principal expels over half of the students when he is appointed. Not only this, he builds a nine foot fence topped with barbed wire and cameras around the perimeter, creating only one way in, and out. PunchBowl Boys High is situated in the......more

Goodreads review by Claire on November 02, 2019

The Lebs is a confronting, demanding, yet compulsively readable novel. It's a very real story of a marginalised community, which is focused on a tense, conflict riddled moment in Sydney in the early 2000s. Ahmad is both honest and authentic in the way he constructs this narrative, the culture of tox......more

Goodreads review by Ifdal on September 05, 2018

This made me squirm in my chair, and laugh out loud. As a Leb from Punchbowl of the same generation, I was irritated by MMA's exposure of (and the harshness with which he dealt with) Leb vulnerabilities, traumas, and weaknesses (not to mention his erasure of leb women), yet exhilarated by the style......more

Goodreads review by James on March 16, 2018

I found this an immersive and thrilling reading experience. We meet Bani Adam at Punchbowl Boys High School in Western Sydney sometime around 2001. Punchbowl Boys is more of a prison, or a pressure cooker, than a school, where the boys casually fling knives, fists and insults at each other down the......more

Goodreads review by Michael on August 02, 2019

Vivid, bleak and occasionally funny. This is a look into a kind of toxic masculinity that isn't often examined closely. It's not fun to read, but I'm glad it exists.......more

Quotes

in its vibrancy, its warty candour and willingness to engage with the messy business of people falling out of their known worlds without knowing where to go next, The Lebs is a strong and resonant novel that deserves to be widely read.

There is a fine ironic intelligence glowing beneath the most jarring images, the most awful events.

an open-eyed and highly charismatic novel broiling with fight, tenderness and ambition.

The Lebs provides a confronting and admirably frank examination of one young man's coming of age in contemporary Australia.

There's an art to capturing the absolute riot that a group of Year 10 boys can cause, and Ahmad has mastered it.

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