Get Free Shipping on orders over $0
This Devastating Fever - Sophie Cunningham
Best of 2022

This Devastating Fever

By: Sophie Cunningham

Paperback | 7 September 2022

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $32.99

$32.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $8.19 with

 or 

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

Sometimes you need to delve into the past, to make sense of the present

Alice had not expected to spend most 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: is Y2K going to be a thing? Y2K was not a thing. 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 last hundred years 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.?

About the Author

Sophie Cunningham AM is the author of seven books, across multiple fiction and nonfiction, children and adults and include City of Trees – Essays on life, death and the need for a forest, and Melbourne. She is also editor of the collection Fire, Flood, Plague: Australian writers respond to 2020.

Sophie’s former roles include as a book publisher and editor, chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, editor of the literary journal Meanjin, and co-founder of The Stella Prize celebrating women’s writing. She is now an adjunct professor at RMIT University’s non/fiction Lab. In 2019, Sophie was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her contributions to literature.
Industry Reviews
‘This Devastating Fever is remarkable: a thrillingly original, deeply emotional exploration of the complex echoes of history set in the shadow of the looming catastrophe of the future. Sinuous, strange, utterly compelling, it is like no other book you’ll read this year.’

More in Modern & Contemporary Fiction

The Names : 'The best debut novel in years' Sunday Times - Florence Knapp
Mad Mabel : ABIA 2026 GENERAL FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER - Sally Hepworth
The Correspondent : WOMEN'S FICTION PRIZE 2026 WINNER - Virginia Evans
Between Sisters - Kristin Hannah

RRP $34.99

$19.99

43%
OFF
Theo of Golden - Allen Levi

RRP $32.99

$18.99

42%
OFF
American Hagwon - Min Jin Lee

RRP $37.99

$24.99

34%
OFF
Music Against the Night : Nocturne Trilogy - Yiyun Li

RRP $34.99

$20.99

40%
OFF
Wild Wicked Mate : Maple Hollow - Laurie Gilmore

RRP $24.99

$16.00

36%
OFF
He Who Fights With Monsters: Hero : Book 3 - Shirtaloon

RRP $34.99

$19.99

43%
OFF
The Song of Stork and Dromedary - Anjet Daanje

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Other Worlds Than These : A Talisman Novel - Stephen King

RRP $34.99

$19.99

43%
OFF
Welcome to the Kokoro Cat Clinic : The Kokoro Cat Clinic - Syou Ishida