AWW21 The Virus is Here: Pandemics in Fiction - Emily St. John Mandel and Laura Jean McKay

As the Lockdowns of 2020 began, Laura Jean McKay’s story of a
world collapsing in the midst of a viral epidemic, The Animals in
That Country, seized the popular imagination: a hallucinogenic
tale of Zoo Flu with wild symptoms that enable inter-species
communication. Emily St. John Mandel’s break-out novel Station
Eleven is a gripping, eerie story of civilisation’s collapse in
the wake of a flu that wipes out 99% of the world’s population.
It sold nearly two million copies worldwide. Both are prescient,
terrifying and ultimately hopeful.


Chaired by Sophie Cunningham