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Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon This Devastating Fever single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 This Devastating Fever
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: was the world’s technology about to crash down around her? The world’s technology did not crash. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague.

'Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether.

'Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is Sophie Cunningham’s most important book to date – a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  •  Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Ultimo, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,: Ultimo Press , 2022 .
      image of person or book cover 1440765230943916621.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 320p.p.
      Reprinted: 7 Jun 2023
      Note/s:
      • Published September 2022.
      ISBN: 9781761150937

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Best of 2022 in Australian Reading Scott Limbrick , Jonno Revanche , Ellen O'Brien , Megan Cheong , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;

— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life Paul Dalla Rosa , 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know Katerina Gibson , 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls Anne Casey-Hardy , 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World Else Fitzgerald , 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun Mirandi Riwoe , 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance Eda Gunaydin , 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living Sally Olds , 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat Chris Womersley , 2022 single work novel
Book Review : This Devastating Fever, Sophie Cunningham Sam Elkin , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: ArtsHub , September 2022;

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel

'An ambitious book that interweaves the lives of Leonard and Virginia Woolf with contemporaneous climate change disasters.'

Against Control Imogen Dewey , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel
Best of 2022 : Part One Geordie Williamson , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17 December - 6 January 2022;

— Review of The Sun Walks Down Fiona McFarlane , 2022 single work novel ; Salonika Burning Gail Jones , 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel ; Heat 1996 periodical (56 issues)
Sophie Cunningham’s Orbits Gurmeet Kaur , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , December 2022;

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel

'In Sophie Cunningham’s This Devastating Fever, tiny comets blaze across the pages. Connecting disparate histories, their orbits disrupt the order of time, a function of the novel’s non-linear form.'  

Spectres and Refractions : Sophie Cunningham’s New Novel Ann-Marie Priest , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 446 2022; (p. 27)

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel

'Early in This Devastating Fever, a writer named Alice has a difficult conversation with her agent, Sarah, about the novel she is working on, which she is considering calling This Devastating Fever. The novel is supposed to be about Leonard Woolf, left-wing journalist and activist, novelist, publisher, best-selling memoirist, and husband of Virginia Woolf, whom he outlived by almost thirty years. Things are not going well for Alice, however. She cannot settle on a theme (the parallels between Leonard’s era and her own proliferate alarmingly) or an approach (experimental approaches have failed her, historical fiction bores her), and her agent is increasingly concerned. In its current iteration, the book is both fiction and non-fiction – which makes it potentially unsaleable, Sarah tells Alice sternly. Forced to choose, Alice picks fiction.' (Introduction)

Sophie Cunningham’s Pandemic Novel Admits Literature Can’t Save Us – but Treasures It for Trying Meg Brayshaw , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 7 September 2022;

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel

'“How good are novels!” So thinks protagonist Alice Fox in This Devastating Fever, the third novel from former publisher Sophie Cunningham. Alice is preparing to chair a panel at a writers’ festival, just as Covid-19 hits the headlines in March 2020.' (Introduction)

Sophie Cunningham This Devastating Fever Carmel Bird , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17-23 September 2022;

— Review of This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel

'Angry and enthralling, this novel challenges the reader’s understanding of what a novel might be.'

The Best New Books Released in September as Selected by Avid Readers and Critics Kate Evans , Claire Nichols , Sarah L'Estrange , Declan Fry , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , September 2022;

— Review of People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living Sally Olds , 2022 selected work essay ; This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel
Books Roundup : Legitimate Sexpectations, Against Disappearance, Hopeless Kingdom, This Devastating Fever Ellen Cregan , Nasteho Said , Rosie Ofori Ward , Georgia Brough , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , September 2022;

— Review of Against Disappearance : Essays on Memory 2022 anthology essay ; Hopeless Kingdom Kgshak Akec , 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel
Sophie Cunningham on the ‘crazy challenge’ of Bringing Leonard and Virginia Woolf to Life Brigid Delaney (interviewer), 2022 single work interview
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 12 September 2022;
Last amended 8 Feb 2023 13:36:08
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