By Lawrence Wright
This book is about a pandemic that starts in Asia and takes over the world quickly and with almost complete devastation. It was actually written before the onslaught of COVID-19, but the present pandemic makes it all the more real. I think Wright’s tale emphasizes what can happen when governments refuse to take precautions and value money/economy over their people/life.
Similar to Ebola, this “plague” is a hemorrhagic virus in which its victims succumb to bleeding from every orifice, and additionally in the book, drowning in their own lung tissue as the body’s immune response attacks the organs mercilessly. The virus here is called Kongoli, for the area in Indonesia from whence it originated its terror hold on the world.
Our main character is Dr. Henry Parsons, who works for the CDC in Atlanta but also helps the WHO, and is at a conference for such when the virus is initially introduced to the medical profession. At the conference, most of the doctors dismiss the illness as something else, but Henry understands the implications of what is at stake if the are wrong and travels to Kongoli, Indonesia to investigate.
Not afraid to address large, political topics, Wright starts hitting the reader hard with the conditions in the Kongoli ghetto right away. Here homosexual men are less than prisoners, relying on charitable organizations like Doctors Without Borders for any sort of aid while native soldiers patrol the perimeter insuring there is no escape. Most politicians are quick to sweep Henry’s advice and warnings aside, as the pandemic continues to grow.
Henry spends quite a lot of time outside of Mecca during the time of the Holy Pilgrimage, and we are embroiled in the politics of the war torn area and the juxtaposition of immense religious beliefs. There is also the clash between tradition and culture with new ideas and technology. While trying to help his friend, a prince of the ruling, Royal Family, navigate these choppy waters, his own family in the United States is trying its best to brave the effects of the pandemic as well.
A large piece of the puzzle lies in the escalating, unspoken war between Russia and the United States. It is at the root of the conflict in the Middle East, and each side is blaming the other for potentially unleashing this biohazard on the world as Kongoli’s origins are rumored to be from inside a lab. Henry’s past comes back to haunt him, as does his time away from his family. As both governments try to seek advantage to become the supreme world power, there becomes less and less world population to rule. The death rates are staggering.
It takes all of Henry’s education, past, and the history of viruses to abate this pandemic, but the cost will still be astronomical.
Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers
Pros
- Not to get too political, but there is a point when the President of the United States starts bleeding from his eyes during an address to the nation after dismissing the importance of precaution and lethality of the virus during the pandemic that was amazing for me
- The book crosses political, geographical, religious, sexual identity, socioeconomic, and military borders, just like the virus does
- Everything seems so relevant to right now and was written about a year earlier – eerie
- There are many points when a female, military doctor stands up to politicians trying to gloss over facts with hard hitting, raw truths blaming them for not taking previous warnings seriously
- I kept picturing Rene Russo and Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak throughout
Cons
- People you really like die – just like in life
- Health care professionals have warned about the possibility of a pandemic consistently and yet here we are, present day COVID-19
- Politicians being self-serving politicians rather than policy-makers focused on improving the quality of life of those they govern – again, present day