Майкл Мохаммед Ахмад – лучшие книги

"I only ever asked you for one thing," my father said, a quiver in his voice. "Just this one thing." It was as though I had smashed the Ten Commandments.
"Oh father," I cried, grovelling at his ankles while my mother and siblings looked on. "The one thing you asked of me—is everything."

Bani Adam has known all his life what was expected of him. To marry the right kind of girl. To make the House of Adam proud.

But Bani wanted more than this—he wanted to make his own choices. Being the first in his Australian Muslim family to go to university, he could see a different way.

Years later, Bani will write his story to his son, Kahlil. Telling him of the choices that were made on Bani's behalf and those that he made for himself. Of the hurt he caused and the heartache he carries. Of the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned.

In this moving and timely novel, Michael Mohammed Ahmad balances the complexities of modern love with the demands of family, tradition and faith. The Other Half of You is the powerful, insightful and unforgettable new novel from the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of The Lebs.

For the last two decades the representation of Arab-Australian Muslims has been coloured by media reports of sexual assault, drug-dealing, drive-by shootings and terrorist conspiracy. This has made it difficult to understand a community which plays an important role in contemporary Australian society. Here, in his first work of fiction, Michael Mohammed Ahmad offers a privileged introduction to the life and customs of ‘The Tribe’, members of a small Muslim sect who fled to Australia just before the civil war in Lebanon. His stories focus on the relationships between three generations of an extended family, the House of Adam, as seen by one of its youngest offspring, a child called Bani, at key moments in its development. Ahmad’s writing is aware of tradition, but its real power is in its simplicity and honesty, and the directness with which he conveys the emotional responses of his young narrator.