Zadie Smith: Thoughts on a pandemic

A special audiobook review of the London essayist's latest work.

Undated handout photo issued by the National Portrait Gallery of their newly commissioned portrait of Zadie Smith by Nigerian born artist, Toyin Ojih Odulola.

It is safe to say that St Patrick’s Day 2020 will go down as a “where were you when” moment. All the swirling rumours peppering your WhatsApp groups, the near apocalyptic images of scrambles for kitchen roll in supermarkets and all the claims and counter claims about the impending crisis had to be answered. That night the country tuned into a hastily arranged announcement from the then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as he announced the unprecedented steps to be taken to combat Covid 19.

There were features written on the speech within a week, oral histories of the 24 hours leading up to it were commissioned within months. Where once, we would step back and take years to contextualise epochal times like this, our new reality and ravenous need to define everything saw us rush to place these events in history.