Malorie Blackman says we ‘have a choice to make’ once coronavirus pandemic is over: ‘No country is an island’

Author expressed her view that the current pandemic ‘has highlighted the fact that long-term individualism just doesn’t work’

Malorie Blackman is among the authors to write a personal essay addressing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The Noughts & Crosses author says we need a “new normal” and shares a number of thoughts about what Covid-19 will reveal about humanity, in her piece for Penguin‘s series of essays, Perspectives.

“What this pandemic has revealed more than anything else is how interconnected we all are,” she writes. “How the fate of people on the other side of the world – or indeed, the other side of the street – may have an impact on all our lives and our sense of well-being.

“No country is an island. No island is an island. No person is an island. We are one large human community sharing the same planet. This pandemic has highlighted the fact that long-term individualism just doesn’t work."

She continues: “We have all had a stark lesson in the need to embrace community. We need to look out for and look after each other because if one hurts, then we all hurt.”

Blackman goes on to say that once the pandemic is over we “all have a choice”.

“Do we go back to the system we had before, where individualism and ‘pulling up the ladder’ were applauded and lauded, or do we try to adopt a more caring, communal attitude, understanding that the fate of our neighbours is inexorably linked to our own?” she says.

“The Covid-19 crisis has proved that the latter is not just possible, not just desirable, but necessary for our mutual long-term societal survival.”

In another essay, His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman said Conservative ministers should “face charges” if it emerges that the UK did not join an EU scheme for PPE “for political reasons”.

“It’s all got to change,” he says. “If we come out of this crisis with all the rickety, fly-blown, worm-eaten old structures still intact, the same vain and indolent public schoolboys in charge, the same hedge fund managers stuffing their overloaded pockets with greasy fingers, our descendants will not forgive us.”

A donation of £10,000 towards booksellers affected by Covid-19 has been made on behalf of the authors taking part in the Penguin series. Read more of the essays here.