Paul Kingsnorth

In December 2021, I wrote three linked essays on the coronavirus, the vaccines, and the radical changes in society which they had precipitated, as part of my online essay project The Abbey of Misrule. The essays found a big audience – bigger than expected – for the case they made about the systems of authoritarian control which have been built around us these last eighteen months, and which continue to deepen, with little debate or consent.

The reception of the essays made it seem like a good idea to collect them in one place, and to give them away for free. This ebook is the result. In it, I am trying to get to the root of what is going on in the covidian era, a time in which so little seems to make sense; I am trying to understand the stories we are telling ourselves about it all, and especially to emphasize how those stories are means in themselves of exerting control over our future direction of travel.

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