AND WE CAME OUTSIDE AND SAW THE STARS AGAIN

This is a book about coronavirus and the view of pandemia through the eyes of writers and journalists from all over the world.

From the story about “A boy and a girl, fraternal twins born in India on March 15, 2020, were named Corona and Covid” (Javier Sinay) to the story of “…while the death count for COVID-19 was rising in Iran and elsewhere, the island of Mauritius kept baiting tourists, seducing them with half-priced plane tickets, offering the privilege to buy three bottles of whiskey at the duty-free store upon arrival instead of the customarily approved two…” (Shenaz Patel), it was a very eye opening lecture for me.

The next words were written by Mario Vargas Llosa on March 15,2020:

“With time, the coronavirus will be no more than an old news story that people barely remember.

What will never pass is our fear of death, of the afterlife, which is at the heart of a collective dread like the fear of plague.

Mankind must respond to them and acknowledge the fleeting nature of existence. 

It is difficult for us to accept that all of life’s beauty, all the adventures life has to offer, belong ultimately to death, and that at any moment it may all come to an end.

It is difficult to acknowledge, too, that if death did not exist, life would be infinitely boring, without adventure and mystery, a cacophonous repetition of the most banal and unpleasant experiences ad nauseam. 

It’s thank to death that we have love, desire, fantasy, art, science, books, and culture — all the things that make life unpredictable, exciting, and bearable.

Reason explains all this, but the turmoil that lies within us stops us from accepting it.

Fear of the plague is, quite simply, fear of death, which accompanies us through our lives like a shadow.” 

Publisher: RESTLESS BOOKS Brooklyn, New York 2020