Novelist Heidi Julavits and scholar Leah Price join our host, Nicholas Dames, to consider how novels help us make sense of catastrophe.

When Ling Ma's Severance was published in 2018, the idea of an airborne global plague seemed theoretical. In hindsight, it appears eerily prescient. How do novels like Severance guide us to understand our place in historical time—to process events like pandemics alongside the mundanity of everyday working life?

You can find complete show notes here and purchase books from our independent-bookshop partner, Harvard Book Store, here.