Rather than chronicle how civilisation attempts to rebuild itself after a virtual Armageddon, Mandel is more interested in the efforts made to preserve art in the face of such adversity. Significantly, the troupe has the words "survival is insufficient" emblazoned upon one of their caravans, a poignant quote from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
"I found that line to be a very elegant expression of something I believe is very true," says Mandel. "I feel like the overarching statement of the book is 'survival is never enough', since as a species we do long for something more, beyond the basics of food, water and shelter. That's very important to us and it's like an instinct we have. You can even see it in the present day in the way people will play musical instruments in refugee camps or put on shows in war zones."
Having originally intended the Travelling Symphony to perform a variety of material from different eras, Mandel eventually decided they should specialise in Shakespeare. "In an early draft, I had them doing everything from David Mamet to modern teleplays," she says. "But it began to seem incongruous because those later works are very much a product of the modern world and, of course, in a post-apocalyptic scenario the modern world has come and gone. You're back in the age of candlelight, so I thought I would limit their repertoire to plays from before the age of electricity, as that seemed like such a clear and natural demarcation point."
With London's playhouses shutting on several occasions as bubonic plague swept through the city during the 16th century, Mandel also draws historical comparisons with Elizabethan England. "As I read more about Shakespeare's life and familiarised myself a bit more with his plays, I was attracted to those kinds of parallels," she says. "And I also liked how the theatre of the time was often a matter of these small companies, setting out on the road. So I liked the symmetry of how in such a narrative, a company like that would again come to be set up."
Opening just before the advent of the Georgia flu in Canada, Station Eleven's first chapter focuses on a production of King Lear in Toronto, which comes to a premature close one night when its star, Arthur Leander, suffers a fatal heart attack on stage.
"It seemed in keeping with that character, who was very much that type of very talented but slightly vain actor, who would wait all of his life until he is old enough to play Lear, which of course many actors do, so it was a perfect role for him," says Mandel. "On another level, King Lear is about someone who loses everything and at that moment in the narrative, the theatregoers are watching the show and what none of them knows is that everything is about to change. All of them are standing on the verge of losing absolutely everything as the flu arrives.
"I never know how my books are going to end, I just set out and see what happens. I start out by writing fragments of different scenes and, in this case, some scenes set in both the past and the future. I have to figure out how it's all going to fit together later on, so what I end up with is an incredibly incoherent first draft, which I spend about two years revising. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle and it can be quite frustrating. But when you finally feel you've got it right and you've achieved that balance you've been striving for, it's a wonderful thing."
Emily St John Mandel will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival at the Aotea Centre, May 13-17.
