Our Post-Pandemic Future

What literature says about what comes next

What the best books on plagues and pandemics show us about what might come after the pandemic. “Unlike the Black Death, which killed tens of millions and often decimated a quarter or even half of the populations of the cities it visited, the Covid-19 crisis is unlikely to immediately and radically reconfigure entrenched power balances. But the extreme stresses it places on our societies will open up spaces for transformation nonetheless. Such as, perhaps, rendering equality more feasible.”