Life As We Knew It by Aisha Dow and Melissa Cunningham has been longlisted for the 2024 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award which recognises the best Australian book of the year that deals with any aspect of Australian life.
The judges asked, ‘Why would anyone want to revisit the beginnings of the pandemic? Because this gripping, detailed, thoroughly-researched book illuminates the events, the decisions and the emotions of those days in Australia.’
Congratulations to Aisha, Melissa, and all the longlisted authors.
The gripping inside account of Australia’s extraordinary pandemic story.
It was never part of the plan that Australia would be locked down and shut off from the world for two years. But when the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, and the bodies began piling up overseas, Australians took unprecedented steps to avoid a catastrophe heading their way. The country’s near-elimination of the deadly virus in the first phase of the pandemic saw it avoid tens of thousands of deaths. But not all Australians were sheltered from disaster, and the strategy came with heavy costs. Many said goodbye to life as they…