The Glass Cage by Ayo Matuluko
2025 finalist: Grades 7 to 9 category
The Glass Cage by Ayo Matuluko is a finalist in the 2025 First Page student writing challenge in the Grades 7 to 9 category.
Students across Canada wrote the first page of a novel set 150 years in the future, imagining how a current-day trend or issue has played out. About 1,000 students submitted their stories.
The shortlist was selected by a team of expert CBC readers. The winners will be selected by YA writer S.K. Ali and be announced on June 12.
Matuluko, 14, a student at Ridgecliff Middle School in Halifax, writes about class divide and climate change.
Romane looks down the glass tower staring down at the busy city below. The city of Eden glitters under the beautiful artificial blue sky, people moving below looking like circuits in a machine, a huge difference from what lies beyond the dome. It's hard to believe that centuries ago humanity lived freely under the beautiful expanse of sunlight.
The dome isn't just a physical boundary it's a boundary of social status, a boundary of life and death and more than that it is a boundary no one was supposed to cross.
The Celestials sit in their shiny towers looking down at all who are below them pretending that the world outside the dome does not exist, leaving those outside to die. They distract themselves from the truth with their gardens, lavish lifestyles, and mansions. To them, the world is perfect, no disease, no death, no poverty. They go to bed each night with food in their bellies but Romane knows their "truth" is nothing more than a delusion they feed themselves.
Romane is from the undercity where the air is infected, where people need gas masks to breathe, where people fight for food, die from diseases, and suffer from poverty. Romane Isn't supposed to be here wearing his beautiful silk clothes instead of the ragged clothes people from the undercity wear.
But he is. And he doesn't waste opportunities.
A message appears in his mind: Phase 1 is ready. Press to activate.
His heart speeds up. Decades of planning and countless deaths have led to this moment.
Spending years sitting in silence while watching friends and loved ones disappear; for daring to speak up for the cause. Sacrificing themselves for the greater good all leads to this moment. Eden's perfect delusion is built on bodies, silence, obedience, and control. But there is a world beyond this dome.
There are people beyond this cursed prison, people who know what freedom is like people who suffer from diseases and poverty. And tonight Romane will remind the city about those people. Romane will remind them that no matter how high the walls are no matter how strong they are they can still crumble.
Romane exhales. Forcing his hands to be still. The tower shines above beautiful, untouchable, perfect. Soon everyone will be forced to see the truth behind this illusion. To remember those they left behind.
Romane turns his back from the balcony.
About The First Page student writing challenge
CBC Books asked students to give us a glimpse of the great Canadian novel of the year 2175. They wrote the first page of a book set 150 years in the future, with the protagonist facing an issue that's topical today and set the scene for how it's all playing out in a century and a half.
Two winning entries — one from the Grades 7 to 9 category and one from the Grades 10 to 12 category — will be chosen by bestselling YA author S.K. Ali.
Her books include the YA novels Saints and Misfits, Love from A to Z and Love from Mecca to Medina. She has also ventured into children's books with her picture book The Proudest Blue and the middle-grade anthology she co-edited, Once Upon an Eid which won the Middle East Book Honor Award in 2020.
Her latest novel explores a different genre to everything she has done before — dystopian science fiction. In Fledgling: The Keeper's Records of Revolution, the first of a YA duology, two Earths are on the brink of self destruction.
Winners will receive...
-
A one-year subscription to OwlCrate, which sends fresh boxes of books to young readers across Canada on a monthly basis.
-
50 free YA books for their school library
You can read the complete rules and regulations here.
Last year's winners were Toronto's Anya Thadani in the Grades 7 to 9 category for Fixed and Kleefeld, Man's Hayley Peters in the Grades 10 to 12 for Forbidden Realities.
The winner will be announced on CBC Books on June 12, 2025.
