Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
Fall 11-15-2021
Publication Title
Modern Fiction Studies
Volume
67
Issue
3
First Page
593
Last Page
595
DOI
10.1353/mfs.2021.0020
Abstract
Elizabeth Outka begins Viral Modernism with an important and, given our own pandemic present, strikingly relevant question: “why does the deadly 1918–1919 influenza pandemic seem to make so few appearances in British, Irish, and American literature of the period?” (1). Until Outka, critics have largely left questions concerning the flu pandemic not just unanswered but unasked. Despite killing more than 50 million people worldwide—the US suffered more deaths in the pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the imperial conflicts of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined—the Great Flu Pandemic has been consistently overshadowed by the Great War in modernist scholarship.
Recommended Citation
Fitz Gerald, James. Review of Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, by Elizabeth Outka. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 67 no. 3, 2021, p. 593-595.
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