Between 1918 and 1920, the influenza pandemic killed tens of millions of people worldwide. It struck at the end of the First World War and overwhelmed families, armies and health systems. The pandemic highlighted how infection, immobility and inflammation could turn the body suddenly vulnerable.

The pandemic killed artists and writers, including Guillaume Apollinaire, and shadowed modernist literature with grief and bodily uncertainty. Later knowledge of clotting complications in severe illness gives this catastrophe new relevance for readers thinking about thrombosis and survival.