ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a cultural sociological analysis of works of literary fiction that describe people's experiences of infectious disease outbreaks: or ‘narratives of pandemic lives’. Outbreak narratives and imaginaries that have been presented in selected works of literary fiction from the fourteenth century onwards are analysed, focusing on portrayals of the plague, HIV and COVID-19. The chapter addresses the question of what we can learn about pandemic lives through these narratives. The discussion begins with The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio), A Journal of the Plague Year (Daniel Defoe) and The Plague (Albert Camus) and moves onto HIV narratives featuring in The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst) and The Great Believers (Sarah Makkai). The newly emerging body of literary fiction that has been published on COVID-19 is then analysed, focusing on four books that were among the first to be released: The Fell (Sarah Moss), Life Without Children (Roddy Doyle), French Braid (Anne Tyler) and Our Country Friends (Gary Shteyngart). The resonances and differences in the COVID-19 narratives with previous pandemic fiction are identified, as are the insights offered across this body of literature into human relationships and social responses to major infectious disease outbreaks.
