In the early decades of the 1900’s, with tuberculosis having taken hold in many European cities,  Karoo sanatoriums were emerging as prime healing destinations for ‘consumptive immigrants.’  Now, almost a century later, the Karoo continues to be marketed as a reprieve from the pathogens of city life. In the past few months, articles have circulated positioning the Karoo as a perfect ‘low-viral’ escape.

Inspired by field and archival research from the Eastern Cape Karoo, this dystopian fiction imagines the contemporary re-opening of a Karoo sanatorium, and the everyday politics in which such a project might be enmeshed.