This Devastating Fever

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.

PRAISE FOR THIS DEVASTATING FEVER

‘This Devastating Fever is both timely and timeless, a sophisticated work of fiction that addresses the anxieties of the present moment as well as the most profound questions of history, art, love and loss. A magnificent novel.’ – Emily Bitto author of The Strays and Wild Abandon

‘It takes a phenomenal control of craft, and a keenly honed intelligence, to do what Cunningham has done with this novel: to interrogate politics and art and culture, to take on love and sex and suffering and loyalty, while all the while ensuring that the reader remains buoyant and captivated by narratives that leap across space and time … I loved this book. I absolutely loved it.’ – Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and 7 ½

‘Deeply humane, full of humour, and delightfully gossipy about the sex lives of the Bloomsbury Group, This Devastating Fever is innovative in format, chatty in tone and will seduce readers with its simple, direct voice.’ – Books+Publishing

‘It’s very funny, very clever and surprisingly moving too.’ – Guardian

‘This Devastating Fever is thrillingly audacious fiction. Sophie Cunningham’s entwined subjects are profound – Leonard Woolf and colonialism, the crises of the present day, the challenges of creative work – and she writes commandingly and inventively about them all. The result is an extraordinary novel.’ – Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel and Scary Monsters

‘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.’ – James Bradley, author of Ghost Species and The Resurrectionist

‘Brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It draws on archived letters and diary entries and the edges of what is real and what is imagined are delightfully blurred. It’s sharply layered, clever and darkly, dryly hilarious.’ – Eliza Henry-Jones, author of Salt and Skin and In the Quiet

‘A book of big ideas that reads as a page turner. I was thrilled to keep returning to the page.’ – Kate Mildenhall, author of Skylarking and The Mother Fault

‘This Devastating Fever left me with a sense of wonder at how nature, art, love and learning from the past can sustain us. Truly wonderful reading that brings Leonard Woolf alive.’ – Good Reading

‘a deft, original novel that is clearly going to prompt many conversations’ – The Booklist