Armed with Art in Times of Uncertainty

Reading dystopian novels by Margaret Atwood during a global lockdown might not have been the best idea. Or so I kept repeating to myself during the restless nights of spring 2020. I saw vivid parallels between the hostile takeover and subversion of the United States by the theocratic state of Gilead, as described by Atwood, and the restrictions inflicted on the population by governments the world over in the name of “public health”, thus supposedly “the higher good”, during the global health crisis caused by Covid-19.