This post originally was published on Audible.com.
It’s been five long, interesting years since the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic and the first global lockdowns helped shape a collective experience of isolation, fear, uncertainty, boredom, and even creativity as coronavirus spread around the world. Buzzwords like “remote schooling,” “social distancing,” and “PPE” became everyday vocabulary as we worried about the health of ourselves and our loved ones, cheered on frontline workers, and tried to navigate our “new normal” as best we could amid shifting guidelines and developments.
As the past half-decade unfolded and brought an official end to the pandemic, we’ve gained some perspective on the many impacts of COVID-19. There is still much to be done in the way of study and research, but a growing collection of storytellers provides valuable reflections, from nonfiction accounts chronicling the virus in real time to novels, stories, and plays inspired by quarantine and contagion. They join classics such as The Decameron in chronicling how human resilience and connection can thrive alongside tragedy and error, and help pave the way toward better understanding and preparation in the future.
Bestselling author Michael Lewis’s taut nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the official US response to the outbreak of COVID-19. Exploring how the virus spread swiftly across the country while putting intense pressure on doctors, researchers, and the federal government to align, The Premonition is narrated in audio by acclaimed performer Adenrele Ojo.
In the spring of 2020, as the world grappled with the deepening coronavirus pandemic, acclaimed British screenwriter and playwright David Hare was struck down by the virus himself. With brutal honesty, sharp humor, and his trademark insight, the renowned writer of modern classics like Skylight and Plenty brings us into his own experience battling his bizarre and terrifying COVID symptoms while unpacking the official response of the UK government.
From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak. A fascinating eyewitness narrative of events as they unfold, Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information.
A family drama that unfolds during lockdown, Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Legendary performer Meryl Streep beautifully channels the novel’s hopeful and elegiac tones as it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.
Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: Each character in this eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and John Grisham to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng—all narrated by accomplished performer Shayna Small.
In this self-narrated survey of the state of COVID-19, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, MD, offers an accessible, data-packed answer to our biggest questions about the pandemic, including what have we learned and how can we prepare for—or prevent—the next one.
Edgar Award-winning author Ben H. Winters penned these three offbeat stories of crime and conundrum in the time of coronavirus. From a high-stakes tale of larceny and teleconferencing to an apartment-bound woman unleashing her inner sleuth, the stories are narrated by a trio of talented performers.
Acclaimed author Zadie Smith’s Intimations, written during the early months of lockdown, explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. Narrated by the author, this moving series of essays questions what it means to submit to a new reality—or to resist it.
Published less than six months after the official start of the pandemic, this urgent and acclaimed exposé by bestselling author Fareed Zakaria helps listeners to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic impacts that may take years to unfold.
This National Book Award finalist tells the story of the worldwide scientific race to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. From award-winning journalist and author David Quammen, and narrated by prolific performer Jacques Roy, Breathless explores the origins, pathology, and countermeasures regarding COVID-19 and what the experience might mean for the next potential global health crisis.
From bestselling author Jodi Picoult comes “a powerfully evocative story of resilience and the triumph of the human spirit” (Taylor Jenkins Reid) about an ambitious young woman whose big plans are derailed as she isolates from the pandemic on the Galapagos Islands. Standout narrator Marin Ireland gives a gripping performance of this simultaneously gut-wrenching, comforting, and totally entertaining story.
