Here Come the Dogs
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A "brilliant [novel] . . . Immediate and compelling, this one deserves a place on the shelf next to Trainspotting or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (Cleaver Magazine).
In small-town suburban Australia, three young men from three different ethnic backgrounds—one Samoan, one Macedonian, one not sure—are ready to make their mark. Solomon is all charisma, authority, and charm; a failed basketball player down for the moment but surely not out. His half-brother, Jimmy, bounces along in his wake, underestimated, waiting for his chance to announce himself. Aleks, their childhood friend, loves his mates, his family, and his homeland and would do anything for them. The question is, does he know where to draw the line?
Solomon, Jimmy, and Aleks are way out on the fringe of Australia, looking for a way in. Hip hop, basketball, and graffiti give them a voice. Booze, women, and violence pass the time while they wait for their chance. Under the oppressive summer sun, their town has turned tinder-dry. All it will take is a spark.
As the surrounding hills roar with flames, change storms in. But it's not what they were waiting for. It never is.
"This stunning novel has such swaggering exuberance that it will make most other fiction you read this year seem criminally dull. You have been warned." —Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
"With compassion and urgency, Here Come the Dogs excavates the pain of those who struggle to remain part of a ruthless equation that has been determined by others." —Los Angeles Times
"A bravado novel about survival and rebirth in a subculture that moves to its own rhythms." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gritty, energetic debut novel comes from Malaysian Australian hip-hop artist and poet Musa. Three childhood friends who live and carouse in Australia's blue-collar suburbs spend a long, hot summer getting their adult acts together. Aleks Janeski, married with children, is a violent petty criminal/enforcer who works a legitimate day job as a house painter and longs for returning with his family to his Macedonia homeland. A high school basketball star before an injury cut his playing career short, Solomon Amosa is an underemployed Samoan dishwasher who loves to party while he keeps his interests alive in his favorite sport. Solomon's erratic half-brother, Jimmy Amosa, works at a public service call-in center, dreams of purchasing a Dodge muscle car, and indulges his strong passion for hip-hop music. The friends like to hang out and do things like paint artful graffiti on public walls, but Aleks's strong-arm crimes catch up to him. He serves two months of prison time, during which Solomon refuses to come and visit him. The friends are dramatically shown going in their separate directions, and, unfortunately, not all of their choices are productive ones. Musa narrates large portions of his story in accessible hip-hop lyrics, lending his novel its edgy, contemporary flavor. This is fully realized depiction of how art and life inform each other.
