Written by: Lyza Rashid
Posted on: June 29, 2021 | 
The Book Launch of 'Seventy Four' at iO - The Space
The coronavirus pandemic has reminded us of the value of life, however, that learning is not without its undesirable implications. The value of life is a contentious debate: humankind’s reduction to bare numbers is no longer surprising, and it is precisely this philosophy that is expounded in Faraz Talat’s debut novella.
Seventy-Four is a sci-fi novel featuring 2022 in all its futuristic, post-pandemic glory. The book weaves biting humour, familial love, romantic failures and grief slyly yet honestly with its predominant subject of clinical microbiology, making the book an exhilarating experience. Talat’s novella retains the post-pandemic dystopian setting strongly, while injecting humanity through the web of relationships between the characters. Ultimately, the prose gives life to a dull and detached world and compels us to reflect on how the value of our life is seldom decided by ourselves.
The novella is narrated by Faiz, Dr. Razia Nikoladze’s adopted brother. Dr. Razia is a scientist who has just turned 73, an important and fatal age in Seventy-Four’s world. The ‘great pandemic’ has wiped out a majority of life and has effectively toppled over pre-existing order of government. What has emerged as a result is “a technocratic order” in Central Asia, and most of Europe. Scientists are now at the helm of the world’s ship, and this system calls itself ‘The Colloquium.”
Dr. Faraz Talat
Dr. Razia’s life now hangs by a loose thread because of the so-called “second chance laws”; Section 295: Regulated Provision of Geriatric Care is one of the most fundamental changes put in gear after the great pandemic. This law maintains: public and private healthcare will not be afforded to citizens after the age of 73; palliative care is available to elderly citizens; elderly patients should be counselled to opt for assisted suicide. However, only some can be exempted, depending on whether their life is “in the interest of national order, security or progress”.
As Dr. Razia starts experiencing an unidentifiable illness worsening every day, her hearing for medical assistance provision is disrupted by the most unusual and terrifying circumstances. The last person to be suspected will overturn the fate of many. Dr. Razia discovers a neostaph (the bacteria that resulted in the great pandemic) that is resistant to its therapy i.e. phage therapy. Ultimately, guilt can make a man do anything and Vadim Nikoladze, her husband, is no exception.
The book is written with a view to brevity, creating multiple instances where the sharp humour prompts the reader to stop and cherish the sentence. When Dr. Razia’s veins become evasive due to her wrinkled skin, leaving the nurses flustered at their incapability, Faiz notes that her veins were hidden “better than a seminary hides its sins”. In another instance, Vadim Nikoladze has to address his ex-wife/colleague in front of a gathering and as he hesitates, Faiz deliberates on the awkwardness of the encounter. Will their “caustic past corrode this thin veneer of professionalism?” These moments create a momentary and subdued comic respite from the impending doom the book steers towards.
The Book Title for Seventy Four
Moreover, it comes as no surprise that the strongest passage of prose in the book comes associated with grief. Nothing warrants a celebration of life more than the experience of grief and the loss of a loved one. For Faiz, “grief comes in waves, each stronger than the last, crashing against denial, grinding it down bit by bit until [he’s] raw and utterly vulnerable.” Packed in this sentence is the author’s moment of literary wonder, which leaves the reader disconcerted as they struggle with Faiz’s loss and relate to the emotions.
Though the book is futuristic fundamentally, it does not rob its characters of their vulnerability and sensitivity. Faiz describes entirely paperless libraries, pharmacies where a scan of the hand reveals medical history, and buildings are made circularly with no edge or end in sight.
Yet, while the world may have become hauntingly cold, most people have not. The readers are repeatedly afforded access to the personal life of Dr. Razia as she contemplates love. All she knows is that “she felt something profound” for her ex-husband. She also anchors regret in her heart for leaving her “home” which was Kartarpura, her heart secretly aches for this “separation”. The character development is praise-worthy, for we see Dr. Razia not as a detached scientist but as a human who is greater than her work, in a world that will not allow her to be so.
An Image of Kartarpura
The offset of the “second chance laws” after the great pandemic, is a heartless dance. However, Faiz is sure to contextualise it for the readers with a piercing thought that when “a generation buries more children than it could count, a quiet death at the age of 73 no longer elicits grief”. What is special about this book is how it takes larger than life and often terrorizing subjects, and reduces them to relatable, honest and strangely understandable ideas. To that end, Seventy-Four imparts the idea that the value of life is ever-changing and in that quantifying process, there will always be someone losing. However, life can also be greater than numbers with connectivity, warmth and passion, all of which the book’s characters echo in their words and actions.
Conclusively, sci-fi is a highly underdeveloped genre in Pakistan. Talat’s contribution to it has been nothing short of stellar, as he weaves a tale of catastrophes, big and small, subdued and dramatized equally skillfully. Seventy-four, in essence, is a suspenseful and glum tale, predicting the inevitable: the time when humans fight against their own selves.
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