Sauleha Kamal" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Alone in Babel, Arts & CultureJanuary 12, 2016

Age of Blight

Reviewed by Sauleha Kamal

—Kristine Ong Muslim, ‘Age of Blight’ (Unnamed Press, 2016)

 

 Image courtesy of Unnamed Press

Image courtesy of Unnamed Press

Haunting. That’s Kristine Ong Muslim’s forthcoming short story collection, ‘Age of Blight’, in one word. ‘Age of Blight’ is divided into four sections: ‘Animals’, ‘Children’, ‘Instead of Human’ and ‘The Age of Blight’. Each section features dark, speculative stories that are all ultimately grappling with the idea that the “end of man is not caused by some cataclysmic event, but by the nature of humans themselves.” Mostly set in the year 2115, these stories are united by their deft exploration of the worst of human nature. The dark future of humanity imagined in this collection is painted with strokes of reality and this sense of reality is what ultimately haunts the reader.

In ‘The Wire Mother (or Harry’s Book of Love)’, a scientist conducts—and painstakingly records—cruel “experiments” on monkeys. His sadistic, yet detached, penchant for torture becomes more chilling still with Muslim’s accurate mimicking of the language of scientific journals. Utterly horrifying, the experiments feel all too real.

In ‘The Ghost of Laika’, we hear from the spirit of the Russian space dog, whose voice is full of regret at her youthful naiveté as she recounts her joy at being “adopted” off the streets by the researchers who would launch her into space. Fed juicy steaks during the course of her training, she grows attached to her ‘owners’ and feels grateful to a “God-dog” for her good fortune. Soon, however she is locked in a capsule and “shot into space.” The image of the loyal, confused and lonely dog haunts the reader as the ghost of Laika reveals the cause of her slow death in the capsule: organs boiled due to overheating. The gravity of the betrayal of one so innocent lingers long after the last word has been read.

‘Age of Blight’ deserves praise for its willingness to confront complex questions
In ‘No Little Bobos’, children are subjected to an unusual experiment on violence. Nursery school children are shown videos of violence against “Bobo” dolls, then given similar dolls to play with and observed to see if they copy the violent behavior. One girl, Chelsea, who is particularly adept at mimicking the violence, is taken for further observation and rewarded with a glass of real milk—a very expensive commodity in this apocalyptic future where farms only exist in one American state—for escalating violent behavior. The way the experimenters interrogate and observe her, with their allusions to forced confessions and brainwashing, recalls questionable law enforcement and intelligence practices of today. The worst of humanity, taken to its extreme in the researchers, stands in stark contrast to the little girl who is ready to do whatever they ask of her only for the promise of another glass of milk.

‘Pet’ concerns a family forced to adopt a pet under government regulations that stipulate that each family must own a pet. The various members of the family subject the pet to months of excruciating torture until it is a submissive shadow of its former self. There is no explanation for this violence other than that “it was—a creature to quench our appetite to maim other people.” This is a world where cruelty is a given and pets become the objects on which people act out their cruel impulses. Yet, heartbreakingly, in this story, the pet remains devoted to the owners, holding on to hope and goodness in a world devoid of empathy—until the twist at the end of the story. The strange premise of this piece raises all sorts of questions about human nature, empathy and morality.

Perhaps the final story in this collection best captures its philosophy about the end of the world: “Unlike in the movies, there is no dramatic thud…Minutes pass.” That is the muted apocalypse imagined in this book, propelled not by a catastrophic event but the evils within human nature itself.. Certainly not the action-packed apocalypse Hollywood has popularized with such films as Day After Tomorrow (2004) and World War Z (2013), ‘Age of Blight’’s apocalypse is a grotesque, drawn-out version of T.S. Eliot’s end-of-the-world “whimper”.

The stories are masterfully written, evocative and memorable, but if I had one criticism, it would be that they are a little too similar—not in material, which is varied as the characters and futures in these richly imagined stories, but in  tone. The sense of hopelessness and despair that is so potent early in the collection begins to lose its impact by the midway point. However, ‘Age of Blight’ deserves praise for its willingness to confront complex questions. If you revel in the uncanny, this is a collection you will not want to miss.

 

‘Age of Blight’ is forthcoming from Unnamed Press

Tags

book reviewsKristine Ong MuslimSauleha Kamal

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleEditors and Contributors’ Books of 2015
Next articleA New Collection from Komail Aijazuddin

You may also like

Pacific Islander Climate Change Poetry

Spotlight Artist: Scheherezade Junejo

Nobody Killed Her

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

Five Haiku

“Come winter and my caravan clamours./ A violet river flows/ lost in the mist-nets; I chew off time.” Five haiku by Nandini Sahu.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
The Writer Formerly Known as Ozimede

"To know the name of a thing is to have a form of control over that thing." Story of the...

Close