The Tiger Flu
CBC Books | | Posted: December 7, 2018 8:47 PM | Last Updated: July 8, 2019
Larissa Lai
In this visionary novel by Larissa Lai — her first in sixteen years — a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by the male-dominated Salt Water City, goes to war against disease, technology, and powerful men that threaten them with extinction.
Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a "starfish," a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to Salt Water City, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a group of powerful men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)
Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a "starfish," a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to Salt Water City, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a group of powerful men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)
From the book
Node: Summer Begins
Day: 15
Behind the clouds of the new monsoon, the ancient mainframe Chang rolls too fast across the sky. He's a big guy, but he appears much bigger than he should because his orbit is deteriorating. His period is down to two hours now, and he casts a veiled shadow over the rooftop of the old Woodward's Building, engulfing Uncle Wai's carefully cultivated garden.
Kora leans against the fence that holds old Delphine in her pen. Stares mournfully into Delphine's golden eyes.
"Uncle Wai's got it," she tells the goat.
From The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai ©2018. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press.