One of the consistent theses of Gerhard Roth's novel (A Common or Garden Death) is that he conceives of human history as merely a particularly virulent phase, perhaps the final phase, of natural history: the already faltering equilibrium disrupted further to precisely the degree in which humanity is hurtling headlong towards collective disaster through the organization of some great enterprise, affecting even the most remote regions, which, seen from their perspective, strikes just as much out of the blue as ever a lightning bolt did from the clearest skies.

W.G. Sebald

Silent Catastrophes