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 ofisolation, 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.

As the archaeologist records his attempts to understand their world a strange negative of our own questions of translation, meaning-making and the ultimate precarity of civilization come to the fore. Drawing on Borges, Le Guin and Calvino,The Mulaiis a mind-bending work of metafiction whose interlocking puzzles resound with Munir Hachemis singularly playful and eclectic style.

Format: Paperback
Published: UK, 2026
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Pages: 172
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1804272736
ISBN 13: 9781804272732