As we write this, the COVID-19 cases in the city of Wuhan, in China's Hubei province, have been safely oscillating between two and seven cases every day, for the last one month. The relieving figure of zero appears so close, and yet so far. But Wuhan has come a long way since it became the centre of the deadly Coronavirus outbreak, which in a matter of few weeks, brought the world to a halt. The unprecedented step of declaring a lockdown in the virus-infected city, also became a template for other countries to follow. In some places, like New Zealand, it met with roaring success—the country declared itself #Coronavirusfree this week. In others, Italy and Spain, for instance, the results have been uplifting; meanwhile some, like the US and India, continue to struggle. And so, irrespective of how much everyone wants to shun China at the moment, Wuhan's brave fight with the virus still brings hope."

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City (HarperCollins India), a newly-released book by well-known Chinese literary writer Fang Fang, is as gripping as a thriller. Only here, we all know what happened in the end; if anything, one wants to find out how the city eventually got there.