The most recommended pandemic books

One of the many wistful and beautiful photos in this book caught my eye in an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in 2021.

Her photography, and the attendant essays, evoke not only the isolation of quarantine, but the ways we rediscovered the desire for human connection. What could be easier than meeting a friend, careful to stay 6’ apart? Or sadder?

I had no idea what I was in for when I started to read Bird Box. I’d seen the movie, and it was good, but the sheer suspense of the book came as a complete surprise. From the very first page, Josh Malerman has created an atmosphere that balances on a very fine edge between dread and hope.

It’s been a long time since a book kept me turning the pages all night, needing to know what happens and getting completely invested in the characters—even after I’d seen the film version.

Bird Box pulled me straight in and didn’t let go, and I’ll be reading the sequel with the lights on.

This is a very interesting novel, which is a deep reflection on human life that is told at the pace of a thriller.

It is set in the decade after the COVID pandemic, not so far into the future where fantasy takes over and not so close to the present where our senses are too dulled from the exigencies of reality and its aftermath. It is a futuristic espionage story that is highly literary in its narration.  

Not many Indian authors come to mind who aren’t entirely obsessed with questions of identity and its politics in their writing – who put down the rear-view mirror and draw from the known world and beyond to write so engagingly. We need good speculative fiction because, having come face-to-face with the dramatic ways in which uncertainty poses itself, speculation is the only constant. This novel is another fresh, surprising addition to the author’s… show more.

When I first read Fever 1793—set in Philadelphia during a yellow fever epidemic—I thought it was a well-written and thought-provoking glimpse into how people would respond in a crisis. After re-reading it post-pandemic, I would now add “prophetic.” Mattie is a typical grumpy teen who would rather have fun than work in her family’s coffee house. But there is a deadly fever rapidly spreading through the city. Desperation unleashes her inner strength, allowing her to prevail over disease, fear, food shortages, unscrupulous thieves, and well-intentioned but poorly-managed medical science.

Laurie Garrett’s magisterial doorstop of a book is meticulously researched and compellingly written. Long before Covid, she made the case that our global public health systems, evolved over centuries and at their peak in the 1960s are now broken: under-funded, under-staffed, ill-prepared, and ill-equipped to handle a global pandemic. The Covid death count proved her right. She documents the political compromises and budgetary cutbacks made again and again that, for example, turned TB, once on the point of eradication, into the deadly multi-drug resistant (and in the case of XTB, totally resistant) scourge that infects billions planetwide. This is a grim, sobering book that made me pine for the days when the Surgeon General could say, without irony, that the age of infectious disease is over.

This novel appeared in 1949 and is eminently readable still—wise and unpredictable—about a plague that decimates the globe before it became fashionable as a topic. Stewart was a professor of English at UC Berkeley. First read it as a teenager, and several times since over the years. It holds up! Stewart was way ahead of his time—and writes a terrific story.

I love everything this author does because his world-building is simple but perfect. The post-apocalyptic world-building in this story involves not only a description of mass desolation but also how that desolation has changed humanity. Of course, people are going to be affected by their environment – especially under post-apocalyptic circumstances – and too often I feel like characters in post-apocalyptic fiction are just the same as people today. 

Zombie worlds all have the same familiar feel, but I really liked the idea of how “tribes” of survivors had formed in cities and how these people had reverted to more primitive ways – if the world hadn’t functioned in decades, yeah, teens wouldn’t know about electricity. The world-building in this book covers everything from setting to characters to a strange new social structure that was really intriguing.

This is a wonderful and diverse cross-section of stories from a variety of African countries representing a thematic focus on a world facing Disruption, whether via climate change, global pandemics, or a plethora of crises, that challenges us all with the necessity to find ways to join with each other if we are to survive. Stand-out stories for me were Zambian author Mbozi Haimbe's "Shelter" (shortlisted for a NOMMO Award this year—best in African Speculative Fiction 2022) and Kenyan Idza Luhumyo’s "Five Years Next Sunday," winner of the 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing. I loved the vibrancy and range of these stories, all bristling with energy and providing novel ways of seeing and learning to confront our global challenges.  

Holloway deserves his cult following—who else would name a chapter "Start from anguish, from Janus. Start from Not Enough! Start from the hydra that we must slay."

His rolling prose makes reading his non-fiction feel like sitting cross-kneed in front of a wonderous storyteller. Moreover, Hope in Hopeless Times harks on my own arguments, as Holloway writes, "Hope lies in our richness, the joy of our collective creativity... Richness against money: this battle will decide the future of humanity."

I love this book because Dan combines his passion for immunology with his own voice. It inspired me to write my own book.

Dan’s boundless enthusiasm for his field explodes off the page, breathing life into what could have been a dry topic. I learnt a huge amount about both writing and immunology.