Together, they battle their invisible enemy with only the crudest weapons, and, when those inevitably fail, faith. Kivrin, who has been inoculated against the plague, helps the local priest, Father Roche, care for the dying in her adoptive town. As the plague scythes through the English countryside that winter of 1348, the bells ring until it seems they might never stop. Her novel Doomsday Book won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and her first short-story collection, Fire Watch, was a New York Times Notable Book. They ring for holidays, they ring for weddings - and they ring for the dead, so that the sound might guide their souls to heaven. Connie Willis has won six Nebula Awards (more than any other science fiction writer), six Hugo Awards, and for her first novel, Lincolns Dreams, John W. And yet, when I recalled Connie Willis' groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning science-fiction novel Doomsday Book, the resonances came back to me with the sound of tolling bells.īells ring throughout Doomsday Book - they mark the hours in the small medieval village in which the time-traveling heroine Kivrin Engle has been stranded, awaiting rescue from her contemporaries in Oxford of the 2050s. It is hard for me to conceive of the bravery required to take care of people with this awful, contagious disease. Many sobering statistics have emerged from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, but one number in particular has stuck with me: More than 200 health care workers have died so far. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Doomsday Book Author Connie Willis
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