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You wrote the novel long before COVID-19 started to dominate global headlines, and the story has since taken on an unexpected congruity with our current moment.

Thomas Gebremedhin: “The Blood Tax” is taken from your forthcoming novel, The Pull of the Stars, which is set during the 1918 Spanish-flu pandemic. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Emma and Thomas Gebremedhin, a senior editor at the magazine, discussed the story over email. “The Blood Tax” is taken from Emma Donoghue’s forthcoming novel, The Pull of the Stars(available on July 21). Pierre Sutcliffe is a bookseller at Readings St Kilda.Editor’s Note: Read “The Blood Tax,” new fiction from Emma Donoghue. What results is an intense and disturbing novel of survival with an ending that seems unavoidable. The protagonists’ daily lives are structured around prayer (once every three or four hours!), building the church and writing holy books – all for the glory of God. Though the religious fervour depicted in Haven is rather mystifying to this agnostic reader, it is a subject Emma Donoghue – the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel Room – explores deeply. Trian and Cormac are more worried about the lack of food, water and other necessities, but are constantly told by Artt that it is God’s will for them to stay, that God will look after them. Artt’s only priority is to set up a church and holy place on this desolate rock. The dangerous voyage eventually takes them to an island (known now as Skellig Michael). They assemble their small boat with supplies, but overload the vessel and must leave most of this essential cargo behind. The three men set out on a pilgrimage to locate this island with the intention of establishing a monastic retreat. One is Trian and the other Cormac, an older monk who played the lyre the previous evening. In the middle of the night Artt wakes the abbot to tell him that he’s had a dream: a vision of an island in the sea where he sees himself with two others. Moreover, he is not just a scholar priest Artt has also spread the light of God, and is rumoured to have converted whole tribes across Europe. Esteemed by all the other monks, Artt is ‘said to have read every book written, and has copied out dozens’.

Also at the meal is Artt, a travelling monk with ‘the bearing of a warrior king’ and the most exciting visitor Trian has ever beheld. We are introduced to Trian, a 19-year-old monk who is ‘still growing, and always hungry’. In a small seventh-century monastery on the coast of Ireland, the monks are celebrating the first fast day after Easter.