Writer Meyer looks back at his 2016 virus thriller
johannesburg — South African novelist Deon Meyer wished the deadly virus wreaking havoc in his 2016 thriller Fever had not turned into an eerily accurate depiction of the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the world.
“I find no pleasure in it,” said the crime fiction author and screenwriter.
“I keep thinking of the sorrow of all those thousands of people who have lost loved ones, lost their jobs, and are living in fear.”
Fever tells the heart-wrenching story of the survival of a father and son in a desolated South Africa after a virus wiped out 95 per cent of the world’s population.
Upon release, the novel was widely acclaimed as a post-apocalyptic masterpiece worthy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, for which the American novelist received the Pulitzer
Prize in 2007.
Four years later, the parallels between Meyer’
Fever and the Covid-19 pandemic are chilling: a coronavirus transmitted from animals to humans, spreading like wildfire across the globe.
In a bizarrely premonitory scenario, borders are shut and characters grow increasingly wary of the other as survival instincts kick in.
“Fever was the culmination of so many different emotions, concerns and a lot of reading,” said Meyer, 61, speaking by phone, locked-down at his southern Stellenbosch home.
“I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic fiction, and read the genre intensely in my 20s and 30s,” he explained. “As I became more and more aware of global warming, Ebola, the Avian Influenza (H5N1) of 1996 and the H1N1 Swine Flu virus of 2009 - 2010, I could not help but think that we live in a world where an apocalypse is a possibility.”
Those concerns became a source of inspiration in 2012 during a flight back from New York. “I bought a collection of short stories, and read them on the plane,” Meyer recalled. “One of the stories... was post-apocalyptic and got me thinking about other possible directions the author could have taken.”
By the time Meyer touched down in Cape Town, the Fever storyline had started taking shape in his head.
Over the next three years, the exjournalist gathered scientific information to feed into his scenario.
“I needed to kill off 95 per cent of the world population, but leave all infrastructure intact,” Meyer explained. “A virus seemed to be the ideal choice.”
Hours of consultations with two virology experts led him to the “best candidate” for the task: a coronavirus.
“They... gave me full details on how it could happen,” said Meyer. —