The Bunnies are back and out for blood in Mona Awad’s anticipated sequel

What happens when the villains of history are given a voice?

In Mona Awad's latest novel We love you, bunny, sequel to her bestseller Rabbitprotagonist Sam publishes his book about girls in his creative writing program, a cult clique known as the Rabbits.

“She just portrays them as such villains, as these plastic girls,” Awad said in an episode of the show. Bookends with Mattea Roach.

“I think the rabbits will have something to say about this image. They will want to protect themselves.”

When Sam returns to her alma mater on a book tour, she is kidnapped by her frenemies, tied up in the attic, and forced to listen to history as they remember it, in all its magical and bloody glory.

Montreal-born and US-based Awad joined Roach to peel back the layers of We love you, bunnythat also shortlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize.

Mattea Roach: Why it was important for this retelling to build on the differences between the rabbits, rather than having them speak as a collective, as in the original. Rabbit?

Mona Awad: IN Rabbitthey are just a monolith, they are like a group of little fascists and speak as one. So I thought it would be interesting to open it up, especially since this book is all about outsiderism, and that's something I'm very interested in as an author. In all my books I explore this relationship between your own loneliness and your imagination.

For these girls, I thought that if I took over each of their heads, I would break this cult and show how everyone feels like an outsider. This is not an experience specific to one type of character. We all feel this in our lives.

Where does your personal understanding of what it means to be an outsider, to feel alienated, come from?

I couldn't connect it to one thing. I'd like to, but I don't think it's ever that easy, so often I think my main characters are impossible to categorize. Often you don't know what race they are.

You may know some details about the class, but not too much. You may not know exactly where they're coming from, and I think that's because of a sense of alienation. Of course, this may have something to do with your personal background.

But I think there's something else that you can't understand that just might make you feel like you don't belong. This is the experience I am trying to convey on this page. I want it to be something that everyone can relate to because I think we all feel that way. I can't tell you exactly what it is for me. I just know that's how I've always felt.

V WI love you bunnyWe have a dark, mad scientist type workshop where we see the Bunnies making people out of bunnies and making Frankenstein-esque creations out of them. Why did rabbits become the object of laboratory torture?

First of all, there are bunnies scattered all over campus. It's interesting because every time I see a rabbit, I always think it's magic. So I think that was part of it.

Rabbits simply have the energy of a trickster. They often appear in horror, but perhaps one of the main reasons is that there is actually a Brothers Grimm fairy tale called hare bride it's about a rabbit groom and I read this story many years ago.

This is a very sad and cruel story.

I wanted to give the girl a lot more power.– Mona Awad

In it, this rabbit forces this girl to marry him, but he is very cruel, and in order to get out of the situation, she actually has to commit a little violence on the doll version of herself in order to escape. This is such a strange story. We know almost nothing about the rabbit, except that he clearly has some kind of power over this girl.

I just thought it was fascinating, but I wanted to give the girl a lot more power.

What tensions did you want to explore between creativity as a collective and creating something alone?

I'm afraid of creativity as a collective. Since creation is collective, everyone wants to claim authorship, individual right. This is the heat that drives the engine We love you, bunny. Each rabbit feels like they are responsible for the magic, and this is the tension you face.

Each rabbit feels like they are responsible for the magic, and this is the tension you face.– Mona Awad

But creating on your own is very lonely. If you are insecure and doubt yourself, which all artists do, it is a separate path and difficulty. But I think because I'm a writer, I always keep myself and the story in the dark.

How happy do you think the rabbits are with the retelling they all did together in this book?

I think they have problems with each other's stories, as they should. The most interesting thing was that they are all writers, so each of them wants to write his own version, in which he is the star, the main character, and everyone else is secondary.

I think they would probably be unhappy with the staffing. They would be very unhappy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Lisa Matthews.