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'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
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Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Best of 2022 in Australian Reading
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 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat 2022 single work novel -
Against Control
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel -
Best of 2022 : Part One
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17 December - 6 January 2022;
— Review of The Sun Walks Down 2022 single work novel ; Salonika Burning 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel ; Heat 1996 periodical (53 issues) -
Sophie Cunningham’s Orbits
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , December 2022;
— Review of This Devastating Fever 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.'
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Books Roundup : Legitimate Sexpectations, Against Disappearance, Hopeless Kingdom, This Devastating Fever
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , September 2022;
— Review of Against Disappearance : Essays on Memory 2022 anthology essay ; Hopeless Kingdom 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel
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Spectres and Refractions : Sophie Cunningham’s New Novel
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 446 2022; (p. 27)
— Review of This Devastating Fever 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)
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Sophie Cunningham’s Pandemic Novel Admits Literature Can’t Save Us – but Treasures It for Trying
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 7 September 2022;
— Review of This Devastating Fever 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)
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Sophie Cunningham This Devastating Fever
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 17-23 September 2022;
— Review of This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel'Angry and enthralling, this novel challenges the reader’s understanding of what a novel might be.'
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The Best New Books Released in September as Selected by Avid Readers and Critics
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , September 2022;
— Review of People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living 2022 selected work essay ; This Devastating Fever 2022 single work novel -
Books Roundup : Legitimate Sexpectations, Against Disappearance, Hopeless Kingdom, This Devastating Fever
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , September 2022;
— Review of Against Disappearance : Essays on Memory 2022 anthology essay ; Hopeless Kingdom 2022 single work novel ; This Devastating Fever 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;
Awards
- 2023 longlisted Colin Roderick Award
- 2023 longlisted Booksellers Choice Award BookPeople Book of the Year — Adult Fiction Book of the Year
- 2023 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Fiction