How COVID-19 affected literature

Note: Today is Pearl Harbor Day. We wish to respectfully acknowledge the occasion and the lives tragically lost as a result.

The World War II analogies to the COVID-19 epidemic may have subsided, almost two years into it, but they’re not completely gone.

Exhibit A: the Guardian’s introduction to its piece on the pandemic novels.

Reporter Lara Feigel notes that in the early days of WWII, authors debated whether to write about what was happening — or help their communities cope with it, on the ground.

With COVID-19, the same trend emerged, and we’re now seeing what the authors who chose to memorialize the pandemic in their fiction made of it.

The Guardian takes a look at some of the COVID-19 pandemic trends in fiction, both explicit and implicit.

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