When the announcement of a new epidemic emerged from the flood of news last week, we really experienced a moment of great anguish. Monkeypox seemed to affect men first and we had just finished reading the end of men, a chilling dystopia about a world ravaged by a deadly epidemic affecting mostly males. In real life, monkeypox is cured rather quickly, but according to the pen of the British Christina Sweeney-Baird, sons, husbands and fathers die in a few days of this mysterious “Scourge”, as it came to be called, leaving half the world distraught, dazed, dejected or combative. At the very beginning of the phenomenon, nothing can stop the disease once declared, which gives heartbreaking scenes when a wife must say goodbye to her husband condemned to lock himself in the bedroom to die alone in order to hope to spare their son.
This choral noir novel features different women in various corners of the world, from Scotland to Singapore, from Russia to the United States. All of them react in their own way, desperately trying either to find a vaccine or to save a beloved man at any cost. Some scenes are comical, such as this battered woman in Russia who, taking advantage of the opportunity, decides to suffocate her husband as he returns home drunk, convinced that his body will be taken away without further analysis by the “hyenas”, these women in airtight suits in charge of exfiltrating corpses from homes. In China, a civil war ends up breaking out, self-proclaimed “rebel leaders” deciding to take advantage of the carnage affecting the men of the Communist Party to seize power. And in prisons, criminals refuse to be released, preferring to stay locked up to escape evil.
And the whole balance of the planet is suddenly transformed: military widows are enlisted to form an army, women are hastily trained as garbage collectors, Apple begins to produce smaller iPhones to better adapt to women’s hands… In short, they are gradually realizing that they can do without men. Except for procreation. To overcome this pitfall, a “child allowance” service has been created with sperm donation from the few immune patients. And everything is good to encourage births: eighteen months of maternity leave without loss of pay, free crèche and some 10,000 euros in bonuses. While waiting for a vaccine which will arrive after two years, we no longer say “people” but “women”.
Written in 2018, before the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, this captivating and rhythmic novel speaks to us particularly. It forces us to rethink the world in terms of a major imbalance and lets us glimpse other power relations. Sensitive souls will come out of it steeped in dread, the word epidemic no longer having anything dystopian about it.