Indian Novel’s Story Parallels Deadly Corona virus Outbreak

An Indian novel published in 2018 and set in various parts of Asia and Europe was uncannily prescient about the possibilities of accidental or otherwise release of biotechnology products and how it can trigger an epidemic comparable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. In this novel, The Butterfly Effect (Niyogi Books) by Rajat Chaudhuri, North Korean agents steal an untested genetically modified rice variety, from a UK lab and carry it back to Korea, which cross-pollinates crops and triggers an epidemic of rapid ageing across the continent with high fatalities. The prestigious Nature journal reported last week about the arrest of a Harvard chemistry chief for making false statements about receiving research funding from China. It is alleged that he received `hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and agreed to lead a lab there’. Although involvement, if any, of the arrested professor cannot be assumed or rejected at this stage, it is well known that Wuhan is the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. In the Indian novel, a scientist working in Britain unknowingly engineers a dangerous variety of GM rice which wreaks havoc among the Asian population. The Butterfly Effect is listed as one of the `Fifty Must-Read Novels about Eco-disasters’ by the Book Riot (US) website and the author has presented it at the Museum of Science Fiction (Washington), Sahitya Akademi (Delhi) and several other places...According to Chaudhuri who has also written about these issues in the mainstream media, `as a writer and activist, I have been aware of the dangers posed by GM food, virus-mediated gene delivery and a gamut of other technologies which if used without precaution can have unimaginably severe consequences. My novel recognises these dangers and amplifies them to a fictional scale.” he added. 

About The Book: 

The Butterfly Effect by Rajat Chaudhuri.

A self-obsessed Calcutta detective who goes by his last name `Kar’, an enigmatic internet cafe hostess in Seoul, and a hotshot geneticist labouring away on a top-secret corporate project. These are just a few pieces in the puzzle that need to be put together to explain a world sucked into the whirlpool of the `butterfly effect’. In the decaying capital city of a near-future Darkland, which covers large swathes of Asia, Captain Old – an off-duty policeman – receives news that might help to unravel the roots of a scourge that has ravaged the continent. As stories coalesce into stories – welding past, present and future together – will a macabre death in a small English town or the disappearance of Indian tourists in Korea, help to blow away the dust of time? From utopian communities of Asia to the prison camps of Pyongyang and from the gene labs of Europe to the violent streets of Darkland – riven by civil war, infested by genetically engineered fighters – this time-travelling novel crosses continents, weaving mystery, adventure and romance, gradually fixing its gaze on the sway of the unpredictable over our lives. 

About the Author: Rajat Chaudhuri is the author of Hotel Calcutta, Amber Dusk and the Bengali short story collection Calculus. He writings has won him a Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellowship, UK, a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, Scotland, a Korean Arts Council-InKo Residency in South Korea, and a Sangam House residency. He has written for Outlook magazine, American Book Review, Asian Review of Books, The Telegraph, Eclectica, among others. Chaudhuri has been a climate change advocate at the United Nations (New York). Trained in Economics, he has worked for international rights advocacy groups and for a Japanese consular mission in his home town, Calcutta.

You can buy this book from Amazon.