The novel has been adapted into a series starring Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel and Gael García Bernal, which can be seen on HBO Max, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and has been published in over thirty languages.

A devastating influenza epidemic is unleashed, which will destroy civilization within weeks. Thus, almost no one notices when the actor playing the title character of King Lear suffers a heart attack during the performance on the night of the outbreak of the pandemic. However, the man's life and death are connected by invisible threads, including his ex-wife Miranda, a comic book artist, Jeevan, who is studying to be a paramedic, and Kirsten, a child actor who watched his death.
Twenty years later, Kirsten wanders among the settlements of a radically transformed world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves the Traveling Symphony, and with all their energy they try to bring light to the lives of communities that are cut off from each other and struggling to survive. However, when they arrive in the small town of St. Deborah by the Water, they meet a violent and obsessed prophet who poses a life-threatening threat to those around him.