Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. What Is an Epidemic?
2. Pandemic Nation
3. Militant Nationalism and Narratives of the Poona Plague Outbreak
4. Plague as Ethical Crisis in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara
5. Narratives of the Spanish Flu Pandemic
6. Infectious Hepatitis: Religion, Rationality and Politics in Satyajit Ray’s Ganashatru
7. AIDS Narratives
8. Fictionalising History: Ashique Abu’s Virus
9. COVID Narratives: Pandemic Precarity
10. Why Narratives?
Epilogue by S. Mukundan: ‘Agni Plague, Buffalo Plague and Mad Plague’: The Cultural Representation of an Epidemic in Plague Sindhu

Epidemic Narratives contends with a reality that is now increasingly becoming our way of life as new infectious diseases break out and older ones resurface almost every year. Using the approach of interdisciplinary studies, the book examines stories of outbreaks in India, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, in the form of fiction, film, memoir, blogs, media reports and epidemiological accounts, to show how epidemics have been represented in social understanding. These stories bear relevance to our experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and will continue to do so for similar outbreaks yet to come. Epidemic Narratives attempts to redress the sparsity of detailed theoretical and analytical scholarship on the subject. The book will be of interest to researchers and students of literature, cultural studies, the history of medicine and public health policy.