The Fruit of Stink by Larissa Lai

The Fruit of the Stink is a futuristic novel set in both 19th-century China and the west coast of Canada, in the now very near future. The two narrators, Nu Wa and Miranda, are distinct, but their respective stories eventually merge. A certain vagueness is maintained throughout the work: are these two singular stories, one mythological and the other futuristic? Do the protagonists correspond to the same person and, if so, is it a hybrid creature capable of metamorphosis, sometimes fish, snake, girl or woman? A strange disease that spreads in dreams muddies the waters. Ultimately, the novel paints a disturbing portrait of industrial China, and an equally disturbing portrait of a near future in which the world is governed by large corporations, cloning and bioengineering.

At times reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, at times of Timothy Findley, at times of Maxine Hong Kingston, The Stinking Fruit is an ecofeminist, queer, and political novel that uses science fiction and genre tropes to encourage genuine reflection on identity—particularly within the Chinese diaspora and Canadian society—as well as on race, sex, gender, technology, globalization, and biopower.

At the intersection of feminist and lesbian literature, cyberpunk, science fiction and magical realism, proposing the revaluation of the myths of the creation of the world as well as a critique of technocapitalism, The Fruit of the Stink asks the question of what it means to be human in a territory wounded and attacked by savage capitalism.