The power of story
Halfway through Chevalier & Gawayn, the 11th novel by retired academic, theatre director and writer Phillip Mann, one of its characters issues a dire warning. “Either humanity adapts,” says health officer Ziga Wardle, “or we go the way of the dodo.”
In this speculative fable, whose full title is Chevalier & Gawayn: The ballad of the dreamer, the future is not looking good. The birdlife has disappeared, there are no pets (an illegal trade in taxidermied animals is flourishing), nature is limited to movie projections of autumn foliage, and rail passengers hang in harnesses “like sides of meat on a butcher’s hook”, their “helmasks” wired into virtual-reality programmes.
The impact of climate change, pollution and fear of contagion stalks the land. A raft of new zoonotic pandemics has driven a politically prescribed norm of disposable suits, random health checks, restrictions on “physical contact leading to the transmission of bodily fluids” and increasing government surveillance.
Remarkably, the plot predates our recent history of pandemic lockdowns. Mann had the story in mind two decades ago and began writing it well before Covid-19 appeared.
“It is not far from present reality,” he agrees, in an email interview from the house
