Prose

A speculative fiction based on many true stories

 

In the early twentieth century, with tuberculosis taking hold in many European cities, sanatoriums in South Africa’s semi-arid Karoo region were emerging as prime healing destinations for “consumptive immigrants.” Today, the Karoo continues to be marketed as a reprieve from the pathogens of city life, most recently as a “low-viral escape” amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by ethnographic and archival research, this dystopian fiction imagines the contemporary re-opening of a Karoo sanatorium and the everyday politics in which such a project might be enmeshed. The story is followed by an ethnographic statement that explains some of the research on which the story is based.