This was, without doubt, my most anticipated read of 2021. Not only because Ahmad's writing is so consistently good, but because I was desperately curious about what it would be like. His debut novel the Tribe felt quite lyrical, affectionate and kinda cheeky funny. The Lebs was a ferocious tour de force, fast and furious and very scathing funny. 

The Other of You is something else again: a deeply tender novel, with a kind of ache at the centre. Bani's voice still displays the deliberately crude patios of young Western Sydney (and contrasts with the gentle formality of his father and his generation) but as you would expect from a framing device of a letter to a son, this is undercut with a seriousness of reflection and a deep preoccupation with love. This is often tangled and conflicted, and the unhappy tension of trying to balance joy and responsibility, being understood with exploring new worlds propels the narrative. There is no single world in which Bani feels comfortable, and his attempts to find a life he can live encapsulate how we find pieces of ourselves in others and in communities around us.

Ahmad's critique of Australia's culture of white supremacy is sharp and unstinting. But I do feel as if so many of the reviews of his work focus on this exclusively, without really discussing what an exceptional writer he is.  It's probably inevitable in a world where the normal perspective, language and tone is set by a white middle-class sensibility so thoroughly that any deviation from this can't be looked past or into. But both in the detail - the dark interior of the camping supply shop, the bewildering, intoxicating chaos of a messy girl's bedroom, the taste of Maccas - and in the way that a tale of angst and growth is told without feeling angsty or saccharine, there's an assured confidence that carries through here.