 First edition | |
| Author | Sigrid Nunez |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Riverhead Books |
Publication date | 2010 |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 978-1594485374 |
Salvation City is a 2010 novel by American writer Sigrid Nunez. The novel follows protagonist Cole Vining after he becomes orphaned by a fictional flu pandemic.
Though the novel was released after the 2009 swine flu pandemic, Nunez began writing it before and did not base the fictional flu pandemic in the novel on the event. [1]
In a review for the New York Times , Abraham Verghese praised the book as "[...] satisfying, provocative and very plausible novel". [2] B.C. Edwards, writing for BOMB , referred to the book as "[... ] a work of quiet but very impressive skill". [3]
In The Hudson Review , Tom Wilhelmus compared the book's depiction of Christianity to Margaret Atwood's in The Handmaid's Tale . Wilhelmus wrote: "Salvation City contains [...] a much milder treatment of fundamentalism [...]". [4]
The novel has received attention during outbreaks of disease after its publication. Torrie Bosch, writing for Slate noted the novel in articles about fictional depictions of pandemic during the Western African Ebola virus epidemic in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. [5] [6]
Nunez was struck by the similarities between the COVID-19 pandemic and the pandemic depicted in the novel. [7]
A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
A cordon sanitaire is the restriction of movement of people into or out of a defined geographic area, such as a community, region, or country. The term originally denoted a barrier used to stop the spread of infectious diseases. The term is also often used metaphorically, in English, to refer to attempts to prevent the spread of an ideology deemed unwanted or dangerous, such as the containment policy adopted by George F. Kennan against the Soviet Union.
Sigrid Nunez is an American writer, best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. She is on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Hunter College (CUNY).
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Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction.
Howard Markel is an American physician and medical historian. Markel is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and Director of the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine. He is also a professor of psychiatry, health management and policy, history, and pediatrics and communicable diseases. Markel writes extensively on major topics and figures in the history of medicine and public health.
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Station Eleven is a novel by the Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. It takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the "Georgia Flu,” has devastated the world, killing most of the population. The book was published in 2014, and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award the following year.
Biological warfare (BW)—also known as bacteriological warfare, or germ warfare—has had a presence in popular culture for over 100 years. Public interest in it became intense during the Cold War, especially the 1960s and '70s, and continues unabated. This article comprises a list of popular culture works referencing BW or bioterrorism, but not those pertaining to natural, or unintentional, epidemics.
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Elizabeth Benedict is an American author best known for her fiction, her personal essays, as the editor of three anthologies, and for The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. Her novels are: Slow Dancing, The Beginner's Book of Dreams, Safe Conduct, Almost, and The Practice of Deceit. Her first memoir, Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own, will be published in May 2023. She lives in New York City and works as a college admissions consultant.
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The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018. The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor.
What Are You Going Through is a 2020 novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2020.
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