The Mulai: Munir Hachemi

The great Spanish author will be in conversation with author and academic, Constantine Blintzios. We're honoured to be hosting the great Spanish author and translator, Munir Hachemi, who will be discussing his wonderful novel, The Mulai, in conversation with the author, poet and creative writing teacher, Constantine Blintzios. _The Mulai_, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches, is a wholly original examination of language, identity and the fragile nature of civilisations. 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. 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.