'The point of writing this book is to apply pressure': Calgary expat Vivek Shraya offers terrifying dystopia in new novel

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When Vivek Shraya began working on her novel, The Hystericals, in 2018, flickers of the world she would create were already in the mainstream.

At the time, Shraya was touring her powerful and provocatively named memoir I’m Afraid of Men.

The #MeToo movement had recently gone viral. The term incel had already been around for a decade or so and was becoming synonymous with misogyny and violence against women. Sexual violence was happening on university campuses, as it always has been.

But in the years, months and even weeks before The Hystericals hit shelves on Sept. 28, Shraya’s book seemed to gain more urgency. The online manosphere became a toxic cultural force. In 2023, Shraya was featured in an article in Rolling Stone magazine outlining the dangers of being a trans musician who tours in the U.S.

Twelve days before the book was published, sexual assault allegations involving a 20-year-old American woman made headlines. She said she was raped by seven members of the Chi Pi fraternity at Cornell University in 2024. It came to light when she filed a civil lawsuit against the Ithaca, N.Y., university, the fraternity and the seven accused.

“From idea to publication, I’ve been in this project for almost eight years,” says Shraya, who will participate in a Wordfest event Sunday at the DJD Dance Centre. “It’s the longest I’ve ever been in a project. I started it before COVID, and I could never have imagined the world that we’re living in would get as terrible as it has. In fact, the note I got from my editor throughout the years was, ‘Your world needs to get bleaker,’ because our world kept catching up.”

The Hystericals takes place in an isolationist state in the not-so-distant future where women’s rights have been taken away. Femicide has become an epidemic in this state, although the government and media tend to look the other way. We are introduced to Sarah Munroe, the activist daughter of two of the state’s superstars. Her father is Graham Munroe, a podcaster who advocates for the “natural order” where men and women know their place. Her savvy mother, Bernice, is a trad-wife who, more or less, advocates for the same thing in order to keep the family’s good standing. They are mortified when Sarah goes public after being raped on campus and watching the perpetrator go unpunished. Eventually, she takes the drastic step of publicly ending her own life. This kickstarts a radical movement called #Freetoo, which sees women “freeing” themselves in a similar manner. The deaths cause the government to become even more extreme, reclassifying all women as ‘hystericals’ and further clamping down on their rights.

The story is told through the eyes of Kennedy, Sarah’s sheltered younger sister who is filled with grief, guilt, shame and confusion as she struggles with her sister’s actions, but becomes fully immersed in the violence and misogyny that has enveloped the outside world.

Throughout the book, the reader learns how the rights of women are being stripped in an almost offhand way, which makes it even more chilling. Amid the violence, a character might casually mention how women aren’t allowed to drive or own businesses or attend university, and how a “guardian tax” has been imposed on women who don’t live with a man.

“I didn’t really want to beat readers over the head with the particularities of the world,” Shraya says.  “I wanted it to be woven in. They are all meant to be part of the background as opposed to ‘Let us take you into this new foreign land’ kind of thing. There are definitely elements that are referencing or borrowing from history.”

The roots of The Hystericals go back to Shraya’s time teaching in the English department at the University of Calgary. She was hired at the beginning of 2018, not long before touring I Am Afraid of Men. One of the first courses she was assigned to teach was on speculative fiction, a world she had barely explored even as a reader. Born in Edmonton to Indian parents, Shraya came out as transgender in 2016. In Calgary, she “learned science fiction while I was teaching,” but opted to assign texts written by BIPOC, queer or women writers, including Metis author Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and work by Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin.

“I found it so engaging seeing how this group of writers used science fiction or speculative fiction in creative ways to tell different kinds of cautionary tales or to imagine different kinds of futures, especially for marginalized people.”

Now based in Toronto, Shraya’s output as an artist is hard to keep up with. She has produced a one-person theatre show, an award-winning web series for CBC Gem, and written memoirs, graphic novels and novels. She founded the publishing imprint VS. Books to promote emerging BIPOC writers. She also has a long career in music, releasing albums under her own name and with Too Attached, a duo with her brother.

The Hystericals also has a musical element. She teamed up with singer Serena Ryder for the single Lily. It has been released under the name Fern McArthur, a fictional character in the novel whose songs shape the activism of Sarah and Kennedy.

As a cautionary tale, The Hystericals is a fast-paced and often uncomfortable read. It is filled with violence. While the words “manosphere” and “incel” are never mentioned, the novel shows how toxic commentary can lead to real-world violence. Throughout the novel, characters are confronted by a “movement” of wild-eyed, hateful young men who resort to severe violence to quash any move towards gender equality.

It is not meant to be a feel-good story, says Shraya, who seems particularly proud of a recent review on Instagram from a reader who wrote, “Is it even possible to say this is a more terrifying, (expletive)-up, updated version of The Handmaid’s Tale?”

“It’s a bleak story, but I recently came across a quote from (poet) Audre Lorde where she said, ‘Hope is counter-revolutionary. Pressure cooks,’ ” Shraya says. “That immediately resonated. I hope The Hystericals is pressure. I think there is a time and place for hope, but I also see the ways in which hope can keep us complacent, keep us shielded. The point of writing this book is to apply pressure.”

Vivek Shraya will participate in A Celebration of Trans Storytelling on Oct. 18 at 3 p.m. at the DJD Dance Centre as part of Wordfest’s Imaginairium.