S4 Ep. 11: COVID Doesn't Know Boundaries: Uzodinma Iweala, Bindu Shajan Perappadan and Suhasini Raj on How African Countries and India Have Handled COVID-19

fiction/non/fiction

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by author, medical doctor, and Africa Center CEO Uzodinma Iweala and Delhi-based journalists Bindu Shajan Perappadan and Suhasini Raj. First, Iweala unpacks flawed stereotypes about health and healthcare in Africa. Reading from his book, Our Kind of People, Iweala draws parallels between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, and discusses how certain African countries, including Nigeria and Tanzania, have fared over the past year. Then Perappadan of The Hindu and Raj of The New York Times talk about their coronavirus coverage, and explain how past crises have influenced the response to COVID-19 in different Indian states.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.

This podcast is produced by Andrea Tudhope.

Selected readings:

Uzodinma Iweala

• Our Kind of People
• Beasts of No Nation
• Speak No Evil

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

• “Online Memorial to COVID-19 Victims Going Live on January 30,” The Hindu

Suhasini Raj

• “The Virus Trains: How Lockdown Chaos Spread Covid-19 Across India” by Jeffrey Gettleman, Suhasini Raj, Sameer Yasir and Karan Deep Singh, with photographs by Atul Loke, New York Times
• “I Covered Coronavirus Victims. Then My Family Members Became Victims, Too.” New York Times

Others:

• Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston
• The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
• The Farewell (film) by Lulu Wang
• “The coming of age of the Africa Centers for Disease Control” by Aloysius Uche Ordu, Brookings
• “Africa’s COVID-19 Denialist-in-Chief” by Lynsey Chutel, Foreign Policy
• National Covid Memorial

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