On October 19, 1987, known as Black Monday, global stock markets experienced a synchronized crash, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 22.6% in a single day, the largest one-day percentage decline in history. The crash originated in the United States and spread to markets in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia, fueled by computerized program trading, overvaluation, and international trade tensions. The event led to the introduction of circuit breakers and a reassessment of financial regulation.

Black Monday became a symbol of the instability of global finance in the late 1980s, influencing the dystopian and apocalyptic themes in the poetry and prose of the period. Writers like Don DeLillo and Salman Rushdie referenced the crash in their works, using it to explore the anxieties of a world increasingly driven by abstract financial forces.