In The Great Derangement novelist Amitav Ghosh explores the reasons why the extreme nature of climate change is hard for people to wrap their minds around. He calls it, "climate change and the unthinkable" and begins asking why contemporary fiction is not taking this topic up. And it must be fiction, he says. Because science fiction is not equipped to connect emotionally and viscerally with readers on this topic. Magical realism won't cut it either. That is because SF is largely taken up with what is not real. But, global warming is real. And given its almost daily mention in the media, what is it, Ghosh wonders, that makes global warming so resistant to the arts, specifically why are novelists not taking the topic up?
Ghosh points to Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, Flight Behavior, as what fiction is capable of achieving in terms of stimulating an awakening in readers. Not set in the dystopian future, Kingsolver's book takes place in contemporary Appalachia, where countless monarch butterflies have mysteriously descended on a rural town in Tennessee. At first, people think the millions of fluttering butterflies are an act of God. A miracle. The Burning Bush. But it soon turns out that the butterflies have deviated from their usual migration path due to habitat destruction caused by climate change in Mexico. Yes, the beautiful butterflies are climate refugees.
I agree, Flight Behavior packed a punch. I'm now reading Diane Cooke's New Wilderness. And have a book review coming out in Dublin Review of Books on Pitchaya Sudbanthad's Bangok Wakes to Rain, which discusses climate change in fiction. In addition to Sudbanthad's novel, I talk about Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2040 and Karen Russell's short story Gondoliers.
New Republic: How to Write About Climate Change
The novel that has had the most impact on me so far was David Mitchell's Bone Clocks. In one of the latter chapters where people are living after the waters have risen and society has broken down.
Also interesting:
Memory of Water is also a great example of literary fiction taking up the topic of climate change. Like David Mitchell, Emmi Itäranta does not see a rosy future–and she focuses on water scarcity. It's a very interesting read. On the topic of water scarcity, at a dinner in Shanghai several years ago, I sat next to a fascinating academic, who told me about a novel he was planing to write. In addition to his research duties at his university, he works for the UN consulting on governance and his idea for a story was about people fighting and dying over diminishing water resources in Bangladesh. I have so often thought of his story over the years. Whether reading about climate change as a factor in the Syrian disaster or in news items about sea level rises and other climate change-induced human upheaval, my mind inevitably goes back to the story he described to me that night. We need stories like his. And I am really looking forward to favorite writer, Lidia Yuknavitch's upcoming novel called, The Book of Joan. I actually cannot wait for this novel!
Looking forward to starting Jeff Vandermeer's new one, as well as Tales of Two Planets. An especially Mandel's Station Eleven.
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