In 2005, Scottish author Peter May wrote a book about a global pandemic that forces officials to institute a lockdown. The novel was rejected by publishers at the time for being too unrealistic. On Thursday, the book was finally published.
The story, and the revival: The thriller is set in London, the epicentre of a global pandemic that forces officials to institute a lockdown.
Peter May said years ago publishers dismissed the novel as “extremely unrealistic and unreasonable”, so he put the book on the back burner and eventually forgot he even wrote it. That was until a fan on Twitter asked him to write a book set against the backdrop of the coronavirus.
“I thought about it for a minute before I realized that I’ve kind of already done it. I told my publisher about it and my editor just about fell out of his chair. He read the entire book overnight and the next morning he said, ‘This is brilliant. We need to publish this now.’”
