“I never tell the Lebs but my family started off in Newtown. My father and my grandmother owned a house in Copeland street but they moved out when I was ten because they said the area was full of pooftas and overpriced falafel.” So says Bani Adam, narrator of the novel, THE LEBS, by Michael Mohammed Ahmad.

Bani is a Punchbowl Boys High School student, but feels alien, with divided loyalties and conflicting attitudes to life, love and learning. A hopeless romantic his love of literature is married to his colossal crush on his English teacher, Mrs Leila. Haimi.

Bani Adam’s yearning for learning earns him a guernsey of perceived elitism by the boys of Punchbowl Boys, illiterate souls who wouldn’t know alliteration or assonance from their ass-holes.

‘At Punchbowl Boys it is never enough to take the side of history, to read the work of great men and to fully understand why everyone in this country hates the Lebs so much – not because we are drug dealers and rapists, but because we are dumb cunts”.

Ignorance and stupidity is also depicted in the decrepit sectarianism that washes through THE LEBS.

“I’m reminded that the boys of Punchbowl only pretend to be united as Arabs and Muslims. In the end it won’t be America to bring us down; it will be our own people, fighting brother against brother.”

“As Alawites living in Lakemba, my parents taught me to tread carefully among the dominant culture of Sunni kids….. There are 285 Muslims in our school and all of them say they are Sunni. I know at least 15 Shi’ites and 10 Alawites… secrecy is the only way to remain safe, especially while Sunnis and Shi’ites and Alawites are slaughtering each other in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and Iran.”

Everything about THE LEBS is impressive, the way Ahmad creates scenes, moods, character with a fiercely tender lyricism at its core.

THE LEBS by Michael Mohammed Ahmed is published by Hachette.