{"title":"Larissa Lai","description":"\u003cp\u003eLarissa Lai’s works weave imaginative narratives that blend speculative fiction with rich explorations of identity, culture, and history. Her storytelling often challenges conventional boundaries, creating worlds where the extraordinary intersects with profound social commentary.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders will find a unique fusion of \u003cem\u003escience fiction\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003efantasy\u003c\/em\u003e infused with poetic language and deep cultural insight, offering thought-provoking perspectives on community, transformation, and resilience.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-tiger-flu-by-larissa-lai-9781551527314","title":"The Tiger Flu","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stunning novel about a community of parthenogenic women under siege after the end of the world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this visionary novel by Larissa Lai—her first in sixteen years—a community of parthenogenic women, sent into exile by patriarchal and corporate Salt Water City, go to war against disease, technology, and an economic system that threatens them with extinction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eKirilow 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 mysterious group of men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘After disease and environmental destruction reorder the world, Larissa Lai's rebel clones and flu-ridden survivors inhabit a future both wildly imaginative and shockingly cruel. Blending the surreal and the entirely possible, \u003ci\u003eThe Tiger Flu\u003c\/i\u003e is majestically compelling. A must-read.’ - Eden Robinson, author of \u003ci\u003eSon of a Trickster\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘Larissa Lai's imagination is both scintillating and dark, and somewhere in this intersection lies her genius. Orwell said that writing a dystopian novel, such as \u003ci\u003e1984\u003c\/i\u003e, was like surviving a long illness. Reading \u003ci\u003eThe Tiger Flu\u003c\/i\u003e—Lai's 2145 and onward—is itself a fever dream, a shivering premonition, a familiar and strange future. This is the sort of fiction we will all need to contract if we are to find a way to live on this side of the point of no return.’ - Wayde Compton, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Outer Harbour\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46708988641516,"sku":"9781551527314","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/11008543482740.jpg?v=1754087185"},{"product_id":"iron-goddess-of-mercy-by-larissa-lai-9781551528441","title":"Iron Goddess of Mercy","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai: a long poem full of rage, love, and despair seeking justice, seeking roots, seeking a 'po-ethics' by which to live.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIron Goddess of Mercy\u003c\/em\u003e by Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel \u003cem\u003eThe Tiger Flu\u003c\/em\u003e) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dances with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term \"Asian\" can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallises in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. \u003cem\u003eIron Goddess of Mercy\u003c\/em\u003e is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePresented in sixty-four fragments to honour the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, \u003cem\u003eIron Goddess of Mercy\u003c\/em\u003e also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever-changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, \u003cem\u003eIron Goddess of Mercy\u003c\/em\u003e is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSummoning the ghosts of history and politics, \u003cem\u003eIron Goddess of Mercy\u003c\/em\u003e explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47470909915372,"sku":"9781551528441","price":39.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781551528441-iron-goddess-of-mercy.jpg?v=1775230150"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/larissa-lai.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}