At first blush, this looks like an innocent book: it’s short (but packs a heavy punch); it has characters with cutesy names (except one of those is a sociopath); and its cover features a melting icy pole, which might just mean a normal summer’s day (but these events which traverse a day and a night are not normal).

In this unsettling narrative, Ahmad explores ‘Other’-ness, masculinity, sexual awakening, and, more powerfully, the loss of a child’s innocence.

Hamoodi is 10 and narrates this novel. Ahmad captures his age-appropriate narrative voice perfectly. Hamoodi goes to a primary school close to home. Walking home, he’s sometimes joined by his cousin, Alooshi, who’s in his final year of high school. The novel is set sometime in the 1990s – Hamoodi loves the TV show, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. He’s a good boy but – completely out of character – gets in trouble in class for uttering the word of the title out loud.

His old teacher and now deputy principal, Mr Brown, gives him the definition (which may not be the first which comes to mind for the reader). The initiating incident is Hamoodi’s humiliation in the school toilets by two of his peers. The immediate aftermath is disproportionate, and its later consequences change Hamoodi’s life.

Hamoodi’s friend at school betrayed him, other kids bully him, Alooshi teases him, and his father is there only as a memory. The absence of Hamoodi’s father – who’s returned to the motherland– hangs heavily over the narrative. Alooshi, who occasionally stays over, is properly named Ali – the same as Hamoodi’s father, but different to him in every other aspect. Hamoodi’s mother is distracted and tired, with her attention on her baby girl, Annabel.

Hamoodi’s alone and vulnerable. Like his Power Rangers, he wants the ability to change. He often says, ‘I am become …’ but, unfortunately, that sentence has an indeterminate ending.

Reviewed by Bob Moore