‘This is a great novel of enduring significance and enormous beauty.’

Sydney Morning Herald

​‘a very moving novel, laced with wit, pathos, and ferocious truths’

The Australian

​ ’Extinction, climate change, the pandemic, love and loss are all there in this vital, virtuoso candle in a jar for eternity.’

Australian Women’s Weekly ​

‘This Devastating Fever is both timely and timeless, a sophisticated work of fiction that addresses the anxieties of the present moment as well as the most profound questions of history, art, love and loss. A magnificent novel.’

EmilyBitto, author of The Strays and Wild Abandon

‘It takes a phenomenal control of craft, and a keenly honed intelligence, to do what Cunningham has done with this novel: to interrogate politics and art and culture, to take on love and sex and suffering and loyalty, while all the while ensuring that the reader remains buoyant and captivated by narratives that leap across space and time … I loved this book. I absolutely loved it.’

Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and 7 ½

‘Deeply humane, full of humour, and delightfully gossipy about the sex lives of the Bloomsbury Group, This Devastating Fever is innovative in format, chatty in tone and will seduce readers with its simple, direct voice.’

Books+Publishing

‘Angry and enthralling, this novel challenges the reader’s understanding of what a novel might be.’

The Saturday Paper

‘bold, cheeky, playfully energetic and utterly distinctive’

Guardian

​‘This Devastating Fever is thrillingly audacious fiction. Sophie Cunningham’s entwined subjects are profound – Leonard Woolf and colonialism, the crises of the present day, the challenges of creative work – and she writes commandingly and inventively about them all. The result is an extraordinary novel.’

Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel and Scary Monsters

‘a triumph of tone and lightness’

Miles Allinson, author of In Moonland

​‘a masterfully told story of intertwined literary lives, old and new’

The Canberra Times

​‘[Cunningham’s] prose crackles and spits with a quintessentially Australian wryness, and soars when depicting the natural world in all of the novel’s vibrantly drawn locales (Australia, England and Sri Lanka)’

South China Morning Post

‘This Devastating Fever is remarkable: a thrillingly original, deeply emotional exploration of the complex echoes of history set in the shadow of the looming catastrophe of the future. Sinuous, strange, utterly compelling, it is like no other book you’ll read this year.’

James Bradley, author of Ghost Species and The Resurrectionist

​‘Brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It draws on archived letters and diary entries and the edges of what is real and what is imagined are delightfully blurred. It’s sharply layered, clever and darkly, dryly hilarious.’

Eliza Henry-Jones, author of Salt and Skin and In the Quiet

‘A book of big ideas that reads as a page turner. I was thrilled to keep returning to the page.’

Kate Mildenhall, author of Skylarking and The Mother Fault

‘This Devastating Fever left me with a sense of wonder at how nature, art, love and learning from the past can sustain us. Truly wonderful reading that brings Leonard Woolf alive.’

Good Reading

‘a deft, original novel that is clearly going to prompt many conversations’

The Booklist

‘an ambitious, empathetic, funny and intelligent book. Cunningham understands something profound about the complex yearnings of the human heart, and her writing about the natural world is exquisite.’

Readings Monthly

‘This Devastating Fever is an extraordinary achievement.’

Kill Your Darlings

​‘A new novel that’s sure to make you feel a little bit better about living through the end times.’

Pedestrian

‘This Devastating Fever contains the joy and pain and terror of caring deeply for another living thing: whether a loved one whose mind is failing, or cicadas destined to be incinerated in the Black Summer fires. It is also about the need to read carefully, write carefully, and think carefully – about the past and how we respond to it, and about what we owe the dead, the living, and the future.’

The Conversation

‘This Devastating Fever feels a bit like a blast from the past and in the best way possible.’

The Urban List

‘I can honestly say this isn’t like any book I have ever read before, yet couldn’t put down.’

Russh Magazine