Altered Spaces of Mourning: Loss and Grief in Times of Covid-19

Loss and grief have often been regarded as primarily affecting our personal sense of time and duration. However, in response to the multiple losses experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, space and mobility have been redefined. To explore this reshaping of place in response to loss, I will turn briefly to definitions of modern grief, and clarify some of the specificities of loss in response to Covid-19. I will analyse examples of literary representations of grief during the pandemic, written in the midst of it, by Jhumpa Lahiri and Arshia Sattar, showing how different experiences of loss affect spatial metaphors, opening up also places of consolation.