Epidemics
Epidemics are a tantalising subject for writers and historians, what with the hideous symptoms, the decimating death rates and subsequent social upset. Myths and legends spring up in their wake, while the plague as metaphor is often used in fiction to unveil our creeping inhumanity or the absurdity of human existence. There has been a lot of hype about swine flu over the last few months, along with a national hotline and a "catch it, bin it, kill it" catchphrase. Will it all prove a flash in the pan or a nasty conflagration? Who knows; probably somewhere in between. But in the meantime, here are ten of the best books about real, imaginary and space-age epidemics to put our current concerns in perspective.
Megan Walsh
1. Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Seconds after a military space probe carrying an alien micro-organism crashes in Piedmont Arizona, all the residents are dead; the virus coagulated their blood. The only two survivors, an irascible baby and an old man with acidosis, are hauled into a nuclear bunker for tests and the countdown begins for a group of scientists (codename Wildfire) to destroy the deadly, mutating extraterrestrial plague. Disagreements over how to beat it (including suggestions that it may be a highly evolved organism and therefore unethical to destroy it) knock time off the clock as the nail-biting race against extinction seems unwinnable. This is medical mystery at its best. The technology’s a little dated, the detached tone a little clinical, but for the anatomisation of a pre-pandemic crisis, Crichton get hearts racing, pages turning.
2. Blindness by José Saramago
Unnamed people, in an unnamed city, in an unnamed country have all (save one) gone blind. Saramago’s opaque stream-of-consciousness (little or no punctuation, run-on sentences, unparagraphed dialogue) keeps the reader partially blind too, the characters’ identities are blurred, as is the city. He saves his most vivid descriptions for the atrocities they commit in order to survive. Is this epidemic of white blindness a real or a metaphorical condition? Will their vision return? If so, what lessons will be learnt? Saramago leaves his answers between the lines. The Portuguese author won the Nobel Prize for Literature for this novel in 1998.
3. Cold Earth by Sarah Moss
Did the Norse Greenlanders die from a deadly plague, were they murdered, or did they starve to death? A team of archaeologists go to Greenland to find out. But after receiving news that a virulent flu pandemic is sweeping the planet, they sit tight in their isolated settlement. As their communication with the outside world breaks down, so too do their relationships: would they rather be quarantined together in the cold, unloving arms of a Greenlandic summer or back at home facing a deadly virus with the ones they love? With no sign of a rescue plane, the unknown becomes their plague as ghosts start haunting the site and physical fear gives way to a contagious psychological dread. Published this year, Moss’s prescience is uncanny, her ability to chill masterful.
4. The Book of Exodus
When old Pharaoh refused to free the Israelites from slavery, the hell-fire and brimstone god of the Old Testament couldn’t resist flexing his muscles and hitting the Egyptians with ten pestiferous calamities. He turned the rivers to blood, infested the land with frogs, lice and locusts, riddled bodies with boils and turned day into night. Not enough, however, to convince Pharoah that this god was with a capital g. So it was the tenth plague which killed all first born Egyptians, that proved God wasn’t to be reckoned with. There are scholars hell-bent on pegging each one to historical events and bible-bashers who believe this was the work of the almighty. Fact or fiction? You decide. Either way, they’re probably the most colourful set of plagues in history/literature.
5. I am Legend by Richard Matheson
The food chain doesn’t usually work when predators vastly outnumber prey, but in Matheson’s post-apocalyptic dystopia, Robert Neville is the world’s last human amid a population of plague-created vampires. The novel alternates between flash-backs of his wife and daughter (including the moment they became infected) and his solitary survival. By day he hunts sleeping zombies. By night, he barricades himself from their mordacious howls with the usual kit – garlic, crosses, mirrors. In the end, condemned to execution and surrounded by the pointy-toothed mob, he realises the title (without any of the Christ-like sacrifice of the unremarkable Will Smith movie).
6. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
Desert islands would have been appealing to the Robinson Crusoe author after writing this fictionalised account of 1665, the year in which the Great Plague (of the bubonic variety) came to London. Published in 1722 under the initials H.D, he got most of his information from eye-witness accounts in the diary of his uncle Henry Foe. Exhibiting all his skills as a novelist and journalist, the book is often celebrated as the first of its type: a novel of a first-person memoir by a survivor. It’s also responsible for immortalising the bell-ringing corpse collector’s cry: “Bring out your dead!”
7. The Plague by Albert Camus
Ever the philosopher, Camus wouldn’t write a novel about a plague-ridden city, without making use of its greater implications for the absurdity of life. When thousands of rats are found dead in the town of Oran, hysteria mounts and the people prepare for an outbreak. The town is sealed off and, suddenly faced with irrational suffering and death, they decide to renounce personal survival to help each other. The townspeople’s optimism and solidarity, Camus hints, finally brings meaning to their lives. Until, that is, the plague retreats and they return to their self-serving ways. Time for another one, maybe?
8. The Black Death by John Hatcher
Hundreds of books have been written about the epidemic of tumid swellings and purple spots (the sign of certain death) that wiped out up to half of Europe’s population in the 1340s. But Hatcher has re-framed the Black Death, making the eyes of a 14th century priest the prism through which we understand it. Setting aside 21st century hindsight, he enters the world of a small village living in fear of its deadly spread. From giving advice to fearful worshippers on how to appease God, to failing to explain why God had concocted such a disgusting death, to the plague’s unforeseen benefits for those spared – land, money, work – the result reads more like a thriller, even though written as fact. Become a 14th century villager and thank God we’ve only got swine flu to worry about.
9. A Time to Dance, A Time to Die by John Waller
At least this deadly epidemic had happy symptoms: an uncontrollable desire to cavort and frolic. The dancing sickness of 16th century Strasbourg is one of the least understood plagues in history. It was kick-started on a summer’s day in 1518 when Frau Troffea lurched onto the streets and danced until she died. Soon hundreds of people had joined the relentless, spasmodic frenzy and, in a desperate bid to control this heretical display, the church erected a stage with musicians to aid in the purge of “bad blood”. Most of the dancers died from exhaustion, stroke, heart attack or dehydration. No-one knows why it happened, although Waller has some fascinating suggestions.
10. Earth Abides by George R Stewart
“When anything gets too numerous it’s likely to get hit by some plague.” So says the slightly antisocial ecologist Ish Williams, one of the only survivors of a virulent airborne pandemic. In science fiction, epidemics are often a handy way of destroying humanity and here, with the proverbial slate wiped clean, we follow three post-plague generations back to another Stone Age. As the earth swiftly adapts to life without us (with the words of Ecclesiastes ringing in our ears “Men go and come, but earth abides”) Old Man Ish hopes the modern age will never return: in this post-apocalyptic paradise, racism no longer exists, the bow and arrow have replaced the gun and nature is back in the balance.
Tuesday, 4 August, 2009
Newsletter
Untitled Books
Your account
Register for an account and review books, comment on articles and build a list of your favourite reviews. Coming soon.
