The Tiger Flu

The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai is a work of dystopian speculative fiction first published in 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press, an independent publisher based in Vancouver, Canada. With its focus on futuristic technologies that merge and manipulate human biology, The Tiger Flu can be subclassified as a cyber/biopunk thriller. The book won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes and celebrates the best LGBTQ books of the year. A Chinese Canadian, lesbian writer, Larissa Lai often explores themes of race, culture, gender, and sexuality in her writing.

This guide refers to the third printing of the paperback edition from 2020.

Plot Summary

Kirilow “Kiri” Groundsel is a member of the matriarchal Grist Village, and Kora Ko is the 15-year-old granddaughter of Lennox Ko, the founder of the cloning company Jemini that played a pivotal role in unleashing a tiger flu pandemic. The story, which divided in five parts, is told from Kiri and Kora’s alternating first-person perspectives. Each chapter features a heading that notes the day and the season when the chapter takes place. Each chapter also is marked with the point of view from which it is told.

In the universe of The Tiger Flu, set in the year 2145, the citizens of earth are fragmented after a flu pandemic—the eponymous “tiger flu”—kills or infects most of the world’s male population. Women are not entirely immune to the tiger flu, but they get it far less often than men. Kiri is a “groom” in Grist Village, which is a community of parthenogenetic women (meaning they can reproduce asexually) living deep in the forest. A groom in the Grist Village is akin to a doctor, and Kiri is responsible for healing and looking after the Grist women.

In Part 1, two important Grist sisters die: Kiri’s lover, Peristrophe Halliana, who is the community’s last “starfish,” and Auntie Radix, the community’s last “doubler.” Doublers are women who spontaneously become pregnant, and starfish are women who can regenerate limbs and organs. As doublers age, grooms like Kiri will harvest fresh organs from starfish to indefinitely extend the doubler’s life so they can produce as many Grist sisters as possible and keep the bloodline going. With both the last doubler and the last starfish dead, the Grist sisterhood faces extinction. At the funeral ceremony for Auntie Radix and Peristrophe, the Grist Village is attacked by a HöST-led fleet of batterkites, a special sort of warship that resembles a jellyfish and is made with oyster and seal DNA.

Meanwhile, in the Saltwater Flats, the area just beyond Saltwater City, Kora Ko lives with her mother Charlotte, her uncle Wai, her brother K2, and her beloved pet goat Delphine. Food is scarce in the Saltwater Flats, and so Charlotte decides to kill Delphine, against Kora’s will, to make a goat stew. Kora Ko joins the Cordova School for Dancing Girls. Kiri and Calyx journey to Saltwater City to find the Salty who infected the Grist Village and brought upon the attack of the batterkites.

In Part 2, Kiri joins the Cordova School for Dancing Girls as the organization’s resident doctor. Madame Dearborn dies after revealing to Kiri that the Cordova School is an outpost of the Grist Village and the students there are all Grist sisters. Kiri amputates Kora’s hand when it becomes infected, but it grows back, revealing that Kora is a Grist sister and a starfish. Kora is desperate to be reunited with her family and accepts an invitation from her brother K2 to a “tiger party” held at the Pacific Pearl Parkade, an area of Saltwater Flats controlled by Marcus Traskin, a competitor of Isabelle Chow, an inventor and the CEO of HöST Light Industries. Kiri follows, and it is revealed that Marcus Traskin has coopted LïFT technology and is transforming Grist sisters into fishes and roses and using them as test subjects for his tiger flu cure. K2, who has befriended him by becoming one of his tiger men, assassinates Marcus, thus controlling the cure for tiger flu, from which he will profit. He tells Kora that she and Kiri must leave and never return to Saltwater Flats. With Myra and Tania, two of Kora’s peers from the Cordova School, in tow, the group heads to the New Origins Archive.

As it turns out, the New Origins Archive is no longer a place of safety for Kora and Kiri. Elzbieta Kruk now vies for power, and so she attempts to “upload” both Kora and Kiri to Chang/Eng, the two mainframe planets that orbit the earth. Isabelle, however, kills Elzbieta by using LïFT technology to turn her into root vegetables, which are consumed at the Feast of Abundance. Isabelle, becoming increasingly erratic at the Feast of Abundance, releases a nuclear missile at the apex of the feast; it hurtles toward the planet Chang, destroying the New Origins Archive (and everyone within) in the process. Making a narrow escape, Kiri, Kora, and two other Grist sisters (Bombyx and Corydalis) flee the scene to New Grist Village in a stolen batterkite. Kora is badly wounded and can only make the journey when she uses the LïFT herself, uploading her consciousness to the batterkite in which they fly.

Set 150 years into the future in the New Grist Village, Part 5 takes place after the fall of the New Origins Archive. Kora has now transmutated into the Kora Tree, which bears fruit of organs and limbs to keep the new era of Grist sisters alive.