'Sea of Tranquility' reflects our pandemic woes through a time-travel lens
In Marienbad -- the fictional future pandemic novel that Emily St. John Mandel's latest work Sea of Tranquility revolves around â author Olive Llewellyn articulates the reluctance to name this world-changing event: "This is difficult to admit, but in those early weeks we were vague about our fears because saying the word pandemic might bend the pandemic toward us."
It's a keen sentiment that in hindsight seems horribly accurate for the Covid-19 pandemic. It may well have been true, too, of the flu in 1918. And clearly history repeats itself in , when a new pandemic in 2203 makes came across as oddly prescient in the first year of Covid in 2020. The release of the stellar TV adaptation in 2021 likely only increased Mandel's quasi-prophetic positioning within pop culture. So it stands to reason that the book she wrote during the early stages of the pandemic would be so self-reflective.
