Is It Tomorrow Yet?

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

One of our most scintillating public intellectuals explores the political paradoxes of the pandemic and helps us think our way through it

''We are able to imagine anything because we are being besieged by something that was considered unimaginable...''

Beneath the panic and bluster, beneath the confusing speeches and the conflicting advice, the Coronavirus pandemic acted, changing our world in the most profound ways. The tragic human cost and the economic devastation will be assessed and calculated for decades to come. But the pandemic also changed things in ways that are less easily expressed and understood. It has made bare the frayed contradictions of modern life. It has distorted things that seemed simple and settled. It has affirmed plain, uncomfortable truths.

In this brilliant, thought-provoking essay, Ivan Krastev, one of our most interesting thinkers today, explores the pandemic''s i