Plague and Cholera

(Paperback)

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Paris, May 1940. Nazi troops storm the city and at Le Bourget airport, on the last flight out, sits Dr Alexandre Yersin, his gaze politely turned away from his fellow passengers with their jewels sewn into their luggage. He is too old for the combat ahead, and besides he has already saved millions of lives. When he was the brilliant young protege of Louis Pasteur, he focused his exceptional mind on a great medical conundrum: in 1894, on a Hong Kong hospital forecourt, he identified and vaccinated against bubonic plague, later named in his honour Yersinia pestis.

Swiss by birth and trained in Germany and France, Yersin is the son of empiricism and endeavour; but he has a romantic hunger for adventure, fuelled by tales of Livingstone and Conrad, and sets sail for Asia. A true traveller of the century, he wishes to comprehend the universe. Medicine, agriculture, the engine of the new automobile, all must be opened up, examined and improved. Ceaselessly curious and courageous, Yersin stands, a lone genius,against a backdrop of world wars, pandemics, colonialism, progress and decadence. He is brought to vivid, thrilling life in Patrick Deville's captivating novel, which was a bestseller and shortlisted for every major literary award in France.

Reviews

A fascinating novel about one of the undercelebrated heroes of science - The Times

Plague and Cholera is not just a brilliant reimagining of a fascinating life, it is a hymn to the beauty and destruction of the early twentieth century - a thrilling adventure from start to finish - Tash Aw, Man Booker-nominated author of Five Star Billionaire

An astonishing novel ... a fascinating kaleidoscope through which to view the history of France and French colonialism ... [A] captivating Conradian tale of discovery and loss - Independent

Author Bio

Patrick Deville is a novelist and French cultural attache. He travels widely and has lived in the Middle East, Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America. He is based in Saint-Nazaire, western France, where he is the literary director of a centre for writers and translators. He is the author of nine acclaimed novels, including the bestselling Plague and Cholera, which was shortlisted for every major literary award in France in 2012 and won the Prix Fnac, Prix Femina and Prix des Prix.