SALEEM SAMAD
The current lockdown is a scenario straight out of movies and paperback thrillers.
When Peter May’s manuscript was pitched -- with a bizarre scenario of a global pandemic -- it was refused by several publishers for being too unrealistic. Now it is scheduled to hit the bookstore on April 30.
The dystopian novel has turned into reality. His current publisher Quercus Books hopes that familiarity with a pandemic will appeal to a wide audience.
Well, the novel did not mention Wuhan in China. Instead, he chose London as an epicentre of a global pandemic that forced authorities to compel a lockdown to save lives.
Obviously, the novelist abandoned the project and eventually forgot that he had written it, until a fan contacted him on Twitter suggesting he should write something for the age of the coronavirus, refreshing his memory and prompting him to retrieve the file from a Dropbox folder.
When he read the manuscript for the first time since he wrote the book 15 years ago, he was shocked at how accurate it was.
The story, in brief, says London city is in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer and authorities have no alternative but to declare martial law. No one is safe from the deadly virus. The British prime minister himself is dead. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed.
Armed vigilantes block a neighbour’s driveway with a tree to force them into home quarantine.
However, the story was not based on the imagination of the Scottish screenwriter and novelist. He had painstakingly browsed hundreds of pages of British and the United States pandemic preparedness documents from 2002 to make it as realistic as possible.
The much talked about book Lockdown was finally published 15 years later; that’s our reality due to coronavirus, which has so far infected more than 1 million people globally.
Available in paperback, the 416- page crime thriller titled Lockdown predicted in 2005 a world in quarantine, which has finally seen the light of the day.
The current coronavirus pandemic has severely squeezed the value chain of the book distributors to reach the bookstores globally. However, the publication is only available through Amazon UK on Kindle format ($4.99) for now. It also will be available in paperback ($13.58) and audio-book from April 30.
The 69-year-old Peter May was born and raised in Scotland, United Kingdom. He was an award-winning journalist at the age of 21 and a published novelist at 26. When his first book was adapted as a major drama series for the BBC, he quit journalism and became one of Scotland’s most successful television dramatists.
He created three prime-time drama series, presided over two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland as script editor and producer, and worked on more than 1,000 episodes of ratings-topping drama before deciding to leave television to return to his first love, writing novels. He has won several literature awards.
“At the time I wrote the book, scientists were predicting that bird flu was going to be the next major world pandemic,” May told the American TV channel CNN.
“The everyday details of how you get through life, the way the lockdown works, people being forbidden to leave their homes. It’s all scarily accurate,” he quipped.
Well, the invisible enemies of bird flu and coronavirus are very different, but the lockdown scenario hits close to home for millions of people currently self-isolating to prevent the virus from spreading.
Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter: @saleemsamad. Reach him at saleemsamad@hotmail.com
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