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This month we are reading the Mulai, by Munir Hachemi
An archaeologist travels to a distant planet to spend time among a mysterious community, a people who live in temperature-controlled domes, worship a deity called Dog, and repeat an elliptical phrase from which they draw their name: mulai, the tree comes. The descendants of a long-forgotten space mission, the Mulai have abandoned the social norms that once bound them to Earth. Over centuries of isolation, their language has become more about change than stability, and the ways they eat, write, reproduce, bury their dead and understand gender have all transformed into something almost unrecognizable. As the archaeologist records his attempts to understand their world - a strange negative of our own - questions of translation, meaning-making and the ultimate precarity of civilization come to the fore.
Drawing on Borges, Le Guin and Calvino, The Mulai is a mind-bending work of metafiction whose interlocking puzzles resound with Munir Hachemi's singularly playful and eclectic style.
Munir Hachemi's career as a writer began with them selling their stories in the form of fanzines in the bars of the Lavapiés neighbourhood of Madrid. They are the author of Living Things (2018) and The Mulai (2023), and are also a translator from Chinese and English. In 2021, they appeared on Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists list.
'Munir Hachemi has created an interplanetary cargo cult and I'm ready to sign up. This exuberant voyage through space and time destabilizes our understanding of human (and not-so-human) civilization and religion through endlessly inventive riffs on language, translation and intertextuality. Julia Sanches' playful, acrobatic rendering is the perfect accompaniment to this wild ride.'
- Jeremy Tiang, author of State of Emergency
Your ticket includes:
A copy of the book
Access to the group at Juno Books on 4th October at 4.30pm
Your ticket does NOT include:
Postage. You need to collect the book from Juno Books, 24 Chapel Walk, Sheffield S1 2PD. You can also pay extra for postage. Multiple book orders will be posted at the same time so you only need to pay postage once. Click on More Payment Options to select instore pick up.
This month we are reading the Mulai, by Munir Hachemi
An archaeologist travels to a distant planet to spend time among a mysterious community, a people who live in temperature-controlled domes, worship a deity called Dog, and repeat an elliptical phrase from which they draw their name: mulai, the tree comes. The descendants of a long-forgotten space mission, the Mulai have abandoned the social norms that once bound them to Earth. Over centuries of isolation, their language has become more about change than stability, and the ways they eat, write, reproduce, bury their dead and understand gender have all transformed into something almost unrecognizable. As the archaeologist records his attempts to understand their world - a strange negative of our own - questions of translation, meaning-making and the ultimate precarity of civilization come to the fore.
Drawing on Borges, Le Guin and Calvino, The Mulai is a mind-bending work of metafiction whose interlocking puzzles resound with Munir Hachemi's singularly playful and eclectic style.
Munir Hachemi's career as a writer began with them selling their stories in the form of fanzines in the bars of the Lavapiés neighbourhood of Madrid. They are the author of Living Things (2018) and The Mulai (2023), and are also a translator from Chinese and English. In 2021, they appeared on Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists list.
'Munir Hachemi has created an interplanetary cargo cult and I'm ready to sign up. This exuberant voyage through space and time destabilizes our understanding of human (and not-so-human) civilization and religion through endlessly inventive riffs on language, translation and intertextuality. Julia Sanches' playful, acrobatic rendering is the perfect accompaniment to this wild ride.'
- Jeremy Tiang, author of State of Emergency
Your ticket includes:
A copy of the book
Access to the group at Juno Books on 4th October at 4.30pm
Your ticket does NOT include:
Postage. You need to collect the book from Juno Books, 24 Chapel Walk, Sheffield S1 2PD. You can also pay extra for postage. Multiple book orders will be posted at the same time so you only need to pay postage once. Click on More Payment Options to select instore pick up.
