Author talked to the pandemic experts — and listened
‘The End of October’ discovers the truth in fiction with a tale of an overwhelming contagion
Lawrence Wright, acclaimed author, journalist and playwright, researched his new pandemic-prescient novel, “The End of October,” with the same intensity that he has tackled other difficult subjects.
When Wright was unable to get a journalist’s visa for Saudi Arabia to research his Pulitzer Award-winning book, “The Looming Tower,” for example, he simply moved to the kingdom and taught journalism so he could immerse himself.
“The End of October” is set in the spring of 2020 and follows epidemiologist Henry Parsons as he tries to contain Wright’s fictional virus, the Kongoli flu. The virus is first detected in Indonesia at an internment camp, where the prisoners have been persecuted because they are gay, and many have compromised immune systems due to HIV/AIDS. It then spreads to Saudi Arabia, and rampages across the world, overwhelming health-care systems, upending life and sending the global economy into a tailspin.
Sound uncomfortably familiar? This is not the first time Wright has been called a doomsday oracle. In 1998, he co-wrote the movie “The Siege” about a terrorist attack in New York City.
But Wright’s latest novel is thanks to journalism, not prophesy, he says. “I spent a lot of time talking to people in the health world and getting their take on what would happen if something like the 1918 influenza returned, and the truth is, they all expected it.” Wright wasn’t the only one to have access to these experts, of course. They are the same professionals who are either employed by, or advise, governments and world health establishments. “The only difference,” Wright says, “is I went to talk with them, and listened, and believed what they had to say.”
Tell me about the genesis of this novel. You wrote in an essay for the New York Times that it was sparked by a conversation with filmmaker Ridley Scott?
Ridley had read the Cormac McCarthy novel “The Road,” which is this post-apocalyptic story of a father and a son, wandering through the ruins of civilization, and there’s no explanation for what happened. So Ridley’s question was, “What happened? What force could cause civilization to crumble?”
There is this theme of unpreparedness in the novel, and I couldn’t help think of the parallels of what you wrote about in “The Looming Tower,” in terms of being unprepared for 9/11, to what’s happening now with COVID-19.
Well a more specific correspondence would be the movie “The Siege,” where I was once again posing a question, “What would happen if terrorism came to America, just as it happened in London and Tel Aviv?” So I went and talked to the counterterrorism people and I got informed by their anxiety and their expertise. It has been a lesson to me as a reporter. We always talk about what did happen. But it’s not that big a step to ask what could happen. Tell me about why you decided to start the virus in Indonesia, and then have it spread to Saudi Arabia?
Well Indonesia has a rather shaky record of hiding disease outbreaks. And this is not true just of Indonesia; China of course has a terrible reputation in that regard. But it struck me as an intriguing place to start it because diseases often turn up in South Asia.
Another parallel was that the disease in the novel became known as the “Muslim flu,” and your president calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”
Disease always brings along stigma and blame. Like the renaissance of the venereal disease, which was called by Italians the “French disease,” and by French people the “Neapolitan disease.” Spain got tagged with the Spanish flu, although it probably began in Kansas … We’re seeing a lot of it right now, especially from Russia, but also from China, Iran and North Korea, all blaming the U.S. and the U.S. blaming China.
We’re just starting to see the fallout of this in terms of geopolitics. Where do you predict or fear that may lead us in the coming months?
I think these charges that the United States cooked this up and planted it in China, and alternatively that China concocted it in a bioweapons lab, are really, really dangerous and irresponsible unless they have any kind of evidence. It has real geopolitical consequences. In the novel, I just extend trends I see in society to their logical extreme. I hope real events don’t take that form, but we’re not done with the shake out on how this is going to affect the world.
We’re still early days, but we know politicians tend to exploit times of fear. But there’s no real ‘other’ that we’re battling. How do you think this is going to play out, especially in the U.S.?
I think that this contagion offers an opportunity for a civilization re-set. Not just in the United States, I think people all over the world are dismayed by the way their governments have behaved. Not every government, but most countries have stumbled in the face of this onslaught … there’s no question we’re going to change, but how? And will we take this challenge to change for the better is yet to be shown.
I found the last line of the novel is devastating. I don’t think it’s a spoiler alert to state it: “We’re going to say that we did this to ourselves.” Why end it like that?
There are so many forces that are driving us apart and it’s keeping us from solving the major problems that face humanity. Pandemics are certainly an example, but climate change in many respects is the source of a lot of the problems we are facing, towering problems that we haven’t really dealt with before. It’s in our hands and in our capacity to deal with these challenges but we simply aren’t up to it in part because we’re tripping over ourselves with blame and hostility.
I guess lastly, I just wanted to ask, how’re you doing? This has to be so incredibly strange for you to have a novel so on-the-nose coming out at this time.
It is a little unsettling and creepy to see the parallels in the resonance in real life … I hope it doesn’t turn out that October is as bad as I predict in the novel. I’m glad that I got it right at one level, but I dread that things could take a turn for the worse.
I’m almost afraid to end with this, but what are you up to next?
I’ve been getting a lot of suggestions about what I should write, like why don’t you write about a woman president? Or why don’t you write about how we solve climate change? I’m starting a new play, and working on a musical about Texas politics with my son, and my pal Marcia Ball, who’s an R&B singer and songwriter and that’s been a tremendous amount of fun. I’m always looking for new stories.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.