Description

Sometimes you need to delve into the past to make sense of the present

Alice had not expected to spend most of the twentyfirst century writing about Leonard Woolf When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium she had only two thoughts One was the fireworks are better in Sydney The other was is Y2K going to be a thing Y2K was not a thing But there were worse disasters to come Environmental collapse The return of fascism Wars A sexual reckoning A plague

Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury Set colonial administrator publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether

Complex heartfelt darkly funny and deeply moving this is Sophie Cunninghams most important book to date a dazzlingly original novel about what its like to live through a time that feels like the end of days and how we can find comfort and answers in the past

This Devastating Fever is both timely and timeless a sophisticated work of fiction that addresses the anxieties of the present moment as well as the most profound questions of history art love and loss A magnificent novel EMILY BITTO author of The Strays and Wild Abandon

This Devastating Fever is thrillingly audacious fiction Sophie Cunninghams entwined subjects are profound Leonard Woolf and colonialism the crises of the present day the challenges of creative work and she writes commandingly and inventively about them all The result is an extraordinary novel MICHELLE DE KRETSER author of Questions of Travel and Scary Monsters

This Devastating Fever is remarkable a thrillingly original deeply emotional exploration of the complex echoes of history set in the shadow of the looming catastrophe of the future Sinuous strange utterly compelling it is like no other book youll read this year JAMES BRADLEY author of Ghost Species and The Resurrectionist