num_pages: 416
description: From one of our most widely read award-winning journalists  comes the powerful unputdownable story of the very human cost of a global pandemic of staggering scope and scale. It is essential reading for our times.In 28  Stephanie Nolen the Globe and Mails Africa Bureau Chief puts a human face to the crisis created by HIV-AIDS in Africa. She has achieved in this amazing book something she writes with a power understanding and simplicity that makes us listen makes us understand and care. Through riveting anecdotal stories  one for each of the million people living with HIV-AIDS in Africa  Nolen explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in magnitude. It is a calamity that is unfolding just a 747-flight away and one that will take the lives of these 28 million without the help of massive immediate intervention on an unprecedented scale. 28 is a timely transformative thoroughly accessible book that shows us definitively why we continue to ignore the growth of HIV-AIDS in Africa only at our peril and at an intolerable moral cost.28 s stories are much more than a record of the suffering and loss in 28 emblematic lives. Here we meet women and men fighting vigorously on the frontlines of Tigist Haile Michael a smart shy 14-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; Alice Kadzanja an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi where one in six adults has the virus and where the average adults life expectancy is 36; and Zackie Achmat the hero of South Africas politically fragmented battle against HIV-AIDS.28 also tells us how the virus works spreads and ultimately kills. It explains the connection of HIV-AIDS to conflict famine and the collapse of states; shows us how easily treatment works for those lucky enough to get it and details the struggles of those who fight to stay alive with little support. It makes vivid the strong desperate people doing all they can and maintaining courage dignity and hope against insurmountable odds. It is  in its humanity beauty and sorrow  a call to action for all who read it.
language: English
title: 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa
publisher: Knopf Canada