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The Conversation
The Conversation
Michelle Hamadache, Director of Creative Writing, Macquarie University

Tenderness and brutality collide in the abject world of Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s Bugger

Amirhossein Hasani/Unsplash

Only an abject universe could contain the story of Bugger, Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s fourth book. With the stench of shit and damp clothes that smell of popcorn and vomit, with descriptions of bulging eyes and “sob-mucus” and sandwiches chewed with an open mouth, Ahmad builds a world able to hold the worst of acts. He leads the reader through abject details that say: this too is the world, and the human within it.


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