Two things I loved about The Mulai

VH Belvadi chose The Mulai by Munir Hachemi as this month's IndieWeb book club. I read the summary on his site and it sounded right up my street. Indeed, it was right up my street! The basic summary, the back cover blurb, is an archaeologist, Dr Cordovero, visits an abandoned human colony on a partially terraformed world, making an anthropological account in diaries and reports. Faida and Sheipa, Mulai women, are on their own voyages of discovery. Last month I read Slow Gods by Claire North and there's a similar attention to language and gender there. It also feels very Ursula K Le Guin, who I love. I'm pretty confident if you like Le Guin you'll enjoy The Mulai. It's got the same cultural and anthropological edge. Vague spoilers ahead as I briefly discuss two aspects I especially enjoyed. The language gets very meta. There is a lot of discussion of Mulai the language. It has this lovely radial, iterative script. Cordovero traces the etymology. Faida translates Italo Calvino's…