Appraising the pandemic (or, the virus time of global warming)
Reviewed: Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy, GIRAMONDO ‘Disruption’ may have been a ubiquitous corporate buzzword in recent decades, but nothing seemed to have prepared the world for the upheavals of a global pandemic. In a matter of weeks, the incessant cross-border flows of globalisation were abruptly halted by lockdowns, border closures, supply chain interruptions and labour shortages. We had imagined a future with limitless movement; now suddenly movement itself was impossible. Writers have already started to respond to recent events with a groundswell of post-pandemic fiction. Some have dealt specifically with the experience of lockdown, such as Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat (2021) […]