| Author: | Larissa Lai | ISBN: | 9781551527321 |
| Publisher: | Arsenal Pulp Press | Publication: | November 13, 2018 |
| Imprint: | Arsenal Pulp Press | Language: | English |
| Author: | Larissa Lai |
| ISBN: | 9781551527321 |
| Publisher: | Arsenal Pulp Press |
| Publication: | November 13, 2018 |
| Imprint: | Arsenal Pulp Press |
| Language: | English |
The first novel in sixteen years by Asian Canadian writer Larissa Lai, whose imaginative, largely speculative novels have been embraced by and widely taught in Asian American and queer circles. Both of her previous novels, When Fox is a Thousand (Arsenal) and Salt Fish Girl, have been the subject of new editions. In the intervening years, Larissa published a notable book of poetry (Automaton Biographies) and has taught and written widely on postcolonial issues (both literary and political) (she is currently a professor in the University of Calgary’s English department).
She has been working periodically since 2001 on The Tiger Flu, a novel that comes from Larissa’s lifelong fascination with fantasy/SF and her desire to write a Joseph Campbell-type hero’s journey but one that encompasses race and gender issues. More specifically, her novel deals with such disparate subjects as new reproductive technologies, genetics, and lesbian separatism and gives them a 21st-century twist.
Plot summary: Kirilow is a doctor whose lover is Peristrophe, a woman known as a “starfish” who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help others. Both are part of a community of cloned factory women who were purged from the metropolis of Salt Water City decades earlier and forced to create their own separate society of female parthenogenes. After a sickly denizen of Salt Water City is found skulking in their local woods, Peristrophe becomes infected with the flu and dies, and others fall sick. We soon learn that the men of Salt Water City are under siege by the lethal flu brought about by the genetic reintroduction of the Caspian tiger for wine-making purposes; they have created a technology to save their flu-sick brethren. Kirilow to rushes Salt Water City to find a new starfish--a woman with self-regenerating abilities who might save Kirilow's sisters from extinction.
In the author’s own words: “I think of The Tiger Flu as anti-apocalyptic. In a way, it's a response to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a novel I loved for its spare beauty, its eye to the darkness, and its tenderness, but also hated because it got rid of women from the start. The Tiger Flu is my attempt to write a novel in which the women live. They may or may not remain human, but they live, and the multi-form life on earth continues, albeit radically changed.”
The author on her influences, and on writing a speculative novel that is grounded in our contemporary cultural reality: “I loved Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for the ways it takes up the serious and very real history of the Dominican Republic, while making space for a fantasy/SF storyline. I loved Gueillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth for the way it pushes the fantasy edge of realism even further. There's got to be a slice of the world we inhabit even in the most fantastic novel, because readers and writers come from that place. But as far as possible, I want to create immersive worlds akin to Tolkien, Herbert, and George Lucas, but with BIPOC, GBLTQ2S and non-binary folk at the centre.”
Blurbs by Junot Diaz (tentative), Eden Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson (American science-fiction writer), Wayde Compton.
The first novel in sixteen years by Asian Canadian writer Larissa Lai, whose imaginative, largely speculative novels have been embraced by and widely taught in Asian American and queer circles. Both of her previous novels, When Fox is a Thousand (Arsenal) and Salt Fish Girl, have been the subject of new editions. In the intervening years, Larissa published a notable book of poetry (Automaton Biographies) and has taught and written widely on postcolonial issues (both literary and political) (she is currently a professor in the University of Calgary’s English department).
She has been working periodically since 2001 on The Tiger Flu, a novel that comes from Larissa’s lifelong fascination with fantasy/SF and her desire to write a Joseph Campbell-type hero’s journey but one that encompasses race and gender issues. More specifically, her novel deals with such disparate subjects as new reproductive technologies, genetics, and lesbian separatism and gives them a 21st-century twist.
Plot summary: Kirilow is a doctor whose lover is Peristrophe, a woman known as a “starfish” who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help others. Both are part of a community of cloned factory women who were purged from the metropolis of Salt Water City decades earlier and forced to create their own separate society of female parthenogenes. After a sickly denizen of Salt Water City is found skulking in their local woods, Peristrophe becomes infected with the flu and dies, and others fall sick. We soon learn that the men of Salt Water City are under siege by the lethal flu brought about by the genetic reintroduction of the Caspian tiger for wine-making purposes; they have created a technology to save their flu-sick brethren. Kirilow to rushes Salt Water City to find a new starfish--a woman with self-regenerating abilities who might save Kirilow's sisters from extinction.
In the author’s own words: “I think of The Tiger Flu as anti-apocalyptic. In a way, it's a response to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a novel I loved for its spare beauty, its eye to the darkness, and its tenderness, but also hated because it got rid of women from the start. The Tiger Flu is my attempt to write a novel in which the women live. They may or may not remain human, but they live, and the multi-form life on earth continues, albeit radically changed.”
The author on her influences, and on writing a speculative novel that is grounded in our contemporary cultural reality: “I loved Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for the ways it takes up the serious and very real history of the Dominican Republic, while making space for a fantasy/SF storyline. I loved Gueillermo del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth for the way it pushes the fantasy edge of realism even further. There's got to be a slice of the world we inhabit even in the most fantastic novel, because readers and writers come from that place. But as far as possible, I want to create immersive worlds akin to Tolkien, Herbert, and George Lucas, but with BIPOC, GBLTQ2S and non-binary folk at the centre.”
Blurbs by Junot Diaz (tentative), Eden Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson (American science-fiction writer), Wayde Compton.
