Coronavirus: "The Year of the Lion", the novel that predicted the epidemic

"The Year of the Lion" opens with a nightmare scene. Somewhere in South Africa, Willem Storm and his son Nico, stop at a deserted petrol station in search of petrol. The place is plunged into darkness, the streets are empty, the surrounding houses abandoned. They are the rare survivors of an epidemic that has decimated 90% of the world's population.

In this novel by Deon Meyer, successful author of thrillers translated around the world, the father and his son flee "the fever" born in tropical Africa from the fusion of two coronaviruses, one human, the other animal. The first man infected with this deadly virus transmitted it to one of his parents, an airport worker.

"He has the perfect virus in his blood. He coughs near a passenger just before she takes a flight to England ”where an important sports meeting is held. Of course, “all developed countries have developed protocols for deadly communicable diseases. There are guidelines and systems in place in the event of an outbreak. In theory, they should work. But nature makes fun of theories ”. It is the beginning of the end.

These strangely resonant lines

Released in France at the Seuil editions in 2017, "The Year of the Lion" could be just one more post-apocalyptic novel. Except that in this book, the South African writer, usually subscribed to the dark stories of corrupt cops in his homeland torn by racial tensions, predicts a global epidemic of coronavirus - this is the precise term he uses - several years before being overtaken by reality.

With hindsight, whole chapters leave speechless. Like this passage where Willem Storm questions farmer Hennie Laas, another survivor of the disaster. "How to tell the fever? Hennie wonders […] We see the news on TV and we hear it on the radio and we think, no, they will stop it before it happens to us and we are a little scared. "

Then come these lines which echo oddly in the head of the reader: "They will surely find a solution and you do not worry too much. Until England and the United States cancel the flights and declare a state of emergency. And then the virus is there, we think, they will have to swarm, and, for the first time, we are really scared. "

Author calls on eminent virologist

The rest, the millions of deaths, the chaos, the survivors who gather in a community, called Amanzi, are pure fiction. But what makes your back cold is the precision with which Deon Meyer describes the coronavirus. How is it possible ? After 700 breathless pages, we discover in the acknowledgments that the author has called on a prominent virologist, Professor Wolfgang Preiser. "I asked him to invent a virus," said the writer.

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It is not the first time that a novelist - or a filmmaker - has been aware of the disaster to come. We remember Julien Suaudeau, author of "Dawa", published in 2014 by Robert Laffont, who describes with astonishing precision the scenario of the attacks of November 13 in Paris. Or disturbing intuitions, some would say prophetic, of Michel Houellebecq whose novel "Platform", released eight days before the World Trade Center attacks, ended with the massacre perpetrated by a group of Islamists.