''The Pull of the Stars'' is a 2020 novel by Irish novelist Emma Donoghue first published by Little, Brown and by

Picador A ''picador'' (; pl. ''picadores'') is one of the pair of horse-mounted bullfighters in a Spanish-style bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the ''tercio de varas'', which is the first of the three stages in a stylized bullf ...

in the UK. The novel was written in 2018-2019, and published earlier than originally planned because it was set in the

1918 influenza pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, Ireland. All the characters were fictional except Dr

Kathleen Lynn Kathleen Florence Lynn (28 January 1874 – 14 September 1955) was an Irish Sinn Féin politician, activist and medical doctor. Lynn was so greatly affected by the poverty and disease among the poor in the west of Ireland that, at 16, she decid ...

. The novel received strongly positive reviews from critics and was longlisted for the

Giller Prize The Giller Prize (sponsored as the Scotiabank Giller Prize), is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English (including translation) the previous year, after an annual juried competition be ...

in 2020.

References

2020 Irish novels Novels about viral outbreaks Novels about diseases and disorders 2020 Canadian novels 2020 LGBT-related literary works Little, Brown and Company books Fiction set in 1918 Spanish flu in popular culture Picador (imprint) books {{2020s-hist-novel-stub Novels set in Dublin (city) 2020s LGBT novels Irish LGBT novels Canadian LGBT novels