A novel presages a dystopian world from a pandemic worse than Covid-19

The End of October, published this April, has at its centre a fictional virus sweeping across the world, forcing people to live under indefinite lockdown, and pushing the global economy disaster.

In early April, Vulture, the American news and culture website, published an interview with Lawrence Wright. The headline simply read: “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. It was an accurate, if slightly ominous, introduction to the man and his work. After all, Wright, a staff writer with The New Yorker, has an inexplicable hunch for all things catastrophic. In 1998, he wrote the screenplay for Denzel Washington-starrer.The Siege, an action thriller that had terrorists rampaging through New York City and setting off bombs. The film turned out to be a box-office dud, but in the wake of the 9/11 attacks