Quarantine Books: Pandemic Novels & Plague Related Fiction
The covid-19 outbreak makes us feel like we're in a dystopian sci-fi movie right now, and due to the grim news we're surrounded by, the last thing some people need is a pandemic novel. However, quite paradoxically, a lot of people are turning to works of fiction related to plagues and pandemics as a way to make sense of all that is going on in the world right now. Movies like Contagion are enjoying a huge surge in popularity, and pandemic novels, too, are enjoying a boost in sales. If it helps you process all that has been going on and adjust to the new world we live in, here is a quarantine reading list of books about pandemics and plagues.
1. Blindness by José Saramago
In this harrowing novel, the Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago paints a disturbing picture of a mysterious epidemic that sweeps across a city, leaving the streets deserted and the victims blind. The government responds by quarantining the affected in an empty mental hospital, where they're subjected to violence, theft, sexual assault, exploitation, and fear.
2. Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
Wanderers is a novel that tells the story of a bewildering plague that spreads across America and afflicts people with a mysterious, trance-like sleep, leading them on a somnambulant walk to a mystery destination. This nerve-racking story begins with a small farm in Pennsylvania where the teenage Shana finds her younger sister Nessie gripped by the convulsive sleep, an occurrence that leads her on a mission to unravel the secret behind the plague.
3. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
One by one, the students of a college fall asleep and don't wake up, baffling their friends, the paramedics who are called to assist, and the doctors at the hospital. As the cases multiply, the town is gripped with panic and fear, the National Guard is summoned, and the survivors are placed under quarantine to prevent them from spreading the illness to the wider population. Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?
4. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake is the first novel in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy. The novel tells the story of a ravaged humanity, decimated by the consequences of genetic engineering and a man-made plague that has wiped out most of humanity. The novel presents a cautionary tale that evokes the vivid and all-too-real horrors of the twenty-first century and compels us to ask: can humans be trusted with their own survival?
5. The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
A bizarre and surreal plague that makes shadows disappear and memories vanish, baffling science and leading to the rise of a sinister cult that worships those without a shadow. Ory and his wife Max survive the plague by hiding in an abandoned hotel in the forest, but their new life is upturned when one day Max’s shadow disappears too.
6. The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian
In this wildly imaginative novel, what remains of the world after a devastating plague is a hospital that is preserved afloat while the rest of the Earth is submerged beneath miles of water. The sole survivors of the world are now the inhabitants of the hospital, who are left to remember the world that has been lost and shape the one that is to come.
7. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Eerily prescient in light of recent events, this acclaimed novel is set in the days following the collapse of civilization due to a devastating strain of the flu which ends up killing 99 percent of all humanity. It tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a theater troupe that roams the wasteland to save art and humanity.
8. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Set in the wake of a flu epidemic that has wiped out most of the American population, this novel tells the story of Hig who has somehow survived the disease that has killed everyone he knows. Now Hig, his dog Jasper, and a cynical gun-toting old man with a stockpile of weapons live in an abandoned airport hangar and spend their days fortifying themselves against murderous bandits. When Hig receives an unexpected radio transmission on his 1956 Cessna, it ignites hope there might still be civilization outside their compound.
9. Wilder Girls by Rory Power
A disease named "The Tox" hits an all-girls boarding school on an isolated island, throwing Hetty's life into turmoil. The Raxter School for Girls has now been under strict quarantine for eighteen months. The teachers died first, one by one, and then the virus began to infect the students, turning their bodies into distorted and grotesque forms with scales and second spines. When Byatt disappears, Hetty resolves to do anything to find her, even if it means stepping outside the fence and breaking quarantine.
