The artist and novelist Audrey Niffenegger began writing the long-awaited sequel to her bestselling debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, in 2012, just after Obama’s re-election. It was a “rosy” time in American politics, “as good as it gets over here”, she says now, but her new novel required her to imagine what the world might look like in 20, 40, 60 years’ time. In the 14 years she spent exploring various dystopian futures, American politics moved on. And her imaginings began to look worryingly realistic.
An early scene in the new book involves a group of neo-Nazis at a house party. When she was writing it, few people believed the US would witness a resurgence of neo-nazism. It’s not like she is “psychic or anything”, she tells me, the clues were all there. “The first thing I remember reading in the news was Watergate, and so I’ve grown up with Reagan, and the Republicans coming on stronger and stronger, so that every Republican president we get is more of a disaster. And I thought the logical progression of that would be fascism,” she says.
