Tuesday Book Club: Michael Mohammed Ahmed’s “The Lebs”
With the Sydney Writers Festival coming up, this week Andrew Pople brought in Michael Mohammed Ahmed’s confronting novel “The Lebs”. Set in Sydney in the late 1990’s, Bani Adam is a Muslim Lebanese boy who dreams of becoming a writer, a career that doesn’t fit in with his friends at Punchbowl High.
Throughout the book, Bani struggles to come to terms with the differences between his religion’s teachings, his own aspirations and the actions of his friends. Michael Mohammed Ahmed looks at the uncomfortable conversations that many of us shy away from, exploring a time when being Lebanese in Sydney meant being demonized and hated.
