Emily St John Mandel: ‘When half the electorate disagrees on basic reality, how do you come back from that?’

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Her hit novel Station Eleven seemed to predict the pandemic, now the novelist is tackling the future of the US. She talks about chance, world-building and experiencing a ‘tiny bit’ of clairvoyanceWhen Emily St John Mandel was a child she had a dream that would stay with her for decades. It was a nightmare in which “I was trying to find my dad in a crowd, and there were other people who looked like him but weren’t him”, she says. “It just kind of struck my imagination.”Forty-ish years later, Mand