Plague and cholera
By: Patrick Deville ; translated from French by J.A. Underwood
Contributors: Underwood, J. A. (James Amery)
Edition: Paperback ed.
Publisher: ABACUS
Published: 2015
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9780349139531
Subjects: Medical scientists; Yersinia infections; Fiction
Other titles: Plague & cholera
Work titles: Peste et choléra
Description: 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 a European tradition of 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.
Notes: "First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Little, Brown."--Title page verso.

Translated from the French.