Simon Lendrum. Photo / Supplied
New Zealand's drinking culture, the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack, pirates: a sweeping new essay collection charts a champion slam poet's incisive vision. Elsewhere, Simon Lendrum discusses poker, Paul Cleave, and why genres are unhelpful. Happy reading.
How to be a Bad Muslim by Mohamed Hassan (Penguin Books, $35). Reviewed by Angelique Kasmara. A longer version of this review will appear at anzliterature.com
It's evident from Mohamed Hassan's collection of essays, How to be a Bad Muslim, that he has a keen instinct for a story, a talent that has also served him well in his pressure-cooker roles as an award-winning journalist and champion slam poet. His debut poetry collection, National Anthem, was a finalist for the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
The essays range from the 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch to Middle Eastern politics, television series Mr Robot, New Zealand's drinking culture, the Sydney siege, questionable therapists in Istanbul and that time he auditioned for a pirate role. Hassan's razor-sharp observations of contemporary life are always illuminating and, by turns, melancholic, poetic and often, very funny.
Obviously, this book is not a literal handbook on how to be any kind of Muslim, nor a dissection of Islam — although "The peace of wild things" does go into the ritual of regular prayer. Instead Hassan explores some aspects of Egyptian history, his own family, and navigating his way as a Muslim millennial through secular spaces. Hassan is adept at building a vivid narrative on the pain of not fitting in, including judgments of the feta sandwiches and basbousa in his school lunchbox, his accent and his abstinence from alcohol.
"As a kid who wore the question of belonging like an ankle monitor wherever I went," he writes, "airports were a magical realm where no one belonged. Like me, everyone was a stranger on a journey. Everyone was seeking something they were missing, and this was the in-between place. Not heaven nor hell. Neutral. Safe."
But every time they transit through Australia, his mother is pulled aside and swabbed for explosives. When Hassan is old enough to travel by himself, he is detained on a regular basis because his name alone triggers security systems at the passport control desk.
The first essay in the collection, "Subscribe to PewDiePie", is a clear-eyed view of how the internet enabled a terrorist to upload a hate-filled manifesto to social media before he turned on his livestream and murdered 51 people in Christchurch on March 15, 2019. Hassan tracks a chilling trajectory of how social media has evolved into the beast that it is today, its platforms building algorithms to keep users feeding the monster. The moving essay "Two Funerals" tells the stories of mourners after the terrorist attack.
In "Ode to Elliot Alderson", he discusses Hollywood's stereotyping of Muslims as "monsters marionetted on screen to sell cinema tickets". It's only when Egyptian-American actor Rami Malek plays Elliot Alderson in the gripping and clever television series Mr Robot, the brainchild of fellow Egyptian-American Sam Esmail, that Hassan finally feels truly represented on screen.
Hassan's insights into movies and social media are meticulously examined, though his observations of the role that media play in perpetuating stereotypes falls a little short. One of his most powerful essays, "How to be a Bad Muslim", does delve into a critique of the fourth estate. Hassan walks into TVNZ at the moment when the 2014 Sydney siege flooded every news channel. In a newsroom where he'd worked for two years, the reaction of his co-workers is telling: "One by one, they all looked up from their screens to see me. One by one, their faces went white. First the producers of the evening news desk, then the reporters, then the cameramen, then the shift manager." Nobody speaks to him in the lunchroom that day, and that year he's passed over for promotion for the third time.
What TVNZ lost with Hassan choosing to leave is our gain: a fresh and rather brilliant essayist.
Kate Camp's new memoir on growing up female
Kate Camp's new book You Probably Think This Song Is About You explores the delight and horror of growing up female in the 80s and 90s, full of bravado and resourcefulness yet heartbreakingly vulnerable. Its title appropriately draws on the genius of confessional singer-songwriter Carly Simon, whose biggest hit, You're So Vain, was released in 1972, the year of Camp's birth. "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee. You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you…"Read the full story here.
You are a professional communicator, but this is your first novel. What encouraged you to take the leap?
I love reading. I suspect I have my mother to thank for that. I had always wanted to try writing a novel, but it takes commitment. When Covid hit in 2020 I was taking a career break, my children didn't need entertaining and I figured I had run out of excuses. Previous attempts had swiftly led to huge feelings of guilt – that I was wasting time on a vanity project better spent on work and family. That first lockdown was so surreal and sufficiently removed from reality to alleviate that guilt. It was replaced by the feeling that if I spent all of lockdown on the sofa I'd feel even worse. It was finally the perfect time to write.
Your main character is a gambler. What about that set-up appealed?
My central character, O'Malley, is a poker player. I could argue the point that poker is as much a game of skill as it is a gambling game, but I'd probably lose. I've been a recreational poker player for the best part of 30 years. It's a world unto itself, full of great characters. It's a meritocracy. I've played with CEOs, sports stars, builders, accountants, plumbers and a host of people who do
"a bit of this and a bit of that". It's an environment that lends itself to a crime story. It's a game in which the score is kept in monetary terms. Where there's money, there's often crime lurking somewhere nearby.
Why write crime?
It's a genre I love. I read to escape for a moment. Crime writers have the ability to tell a great story and deal with many of life's big questions while always entertaining the reader. I think crime readers are naturally drawn to the dark side of life and want to explore it through the safety of fiction. I think genres are often unhelpful. The best crime writing is just great writing. Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy all technically write "crime". But they write the hell out of it.
Paul Cleave, arguably the country's best crime writer, has described your book as "one hell of a debut". Reaction?
Incredible. I'm a huge Paul Cleave fan – I've read everything he has published – so I couldn't have asked for a better endorsement. It was, I think, a masterstroke from my esteemed publisher Upstart Press, to seek Paul's quote. I was getting a little bit precious about the cover artwork that they were suggesting for the book, so I wasn't looking forward to the next iteration. It came with Paul's quote on it, which I hadn't known was in the works. I had no further complaints!
You are working on another book. How is it going?
It's going well. O'Malley and Claire, the central characters in The Slow Roll, are back for another adventure. My weekends are busy. I started a new job a week after The Slow Roll was signed by Upstart, so I'm down to two days a week of writing time. But I've got a bit more of an idea what I'm doing this time around, so it feels a little less of a gamble.
The Slow Roll, by Simon Lendrum (Upstart Press, $40), is out now.
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.