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“Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders . . . A disturbing, eerily timed novel.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A compelling read up to the last sentence. Wright has come up with a story worthy of Michael Crichton. In an eerily calm, matter-of-fact way, and backed by meticulous research, he imagines what the world would actually be like in the grip of a devastating new virus.” —Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone
“This timely literary page-turner shows Wright is on a par with the best writers in the genre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
In this riveting medical thriller—from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author—Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.
At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons—microbiologist, epidemiologist—travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city . . . A Russian émigré, a woman who has risen to deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare . . . Already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic . . . Henry's wife, Jill, and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta . . . And the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions—scientific, religious, governmental—and decimating the population. As packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases, Lawrence Wright has given us a full-tilt, electrifying, one-of-a-kind thriller.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 28, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593212233
- File size: 387015 KB
- Duration: 13:26:16
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from March 9, 2020
On a trip to the site of an “unusual cluster of adolescent fatalities in a refugee camp” in Indonesia, World Health Organization doctor Henry Parsons, the hero of this multifaceted thriller from Pulitzer Prize winner Wright (God Save Texas), discovers the compound decimated by an unknown disease. Parsons sounds the alarm that the virus responsible may have spread after learning that his driver, who went inside the camp, was allowed to leave the area. The stakes rise when Parsons finds out that the driver was headed for Saudi Arabia to participate in a pilgrimage to Mecca, thus potentially exposing millions to the fatal infection. Meanwhile, the Saudis and Iranians are at each other’s throats, and a career NSC official fears that Putin’s Russia is preparing a cyberattack that would cripple the U.S. Wright pulls few punches and imbues even walk-on characters with enough humanity that their fate will matter to readers. This timely literary page-turner shows Wright is on a par with the best writers in the genre. Author tour. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. -
Narrator Mark Bramhall keeps to a firm pace in a story that is often heavily factual and scientific. Many listeners are already familiar with Lawrence Wright's own narration of his prize-winning LOOMING TOWER, which charted the events leading up to 9/11. Wright's new novel about the global spread of a killer virus couldn't be better--or worse--timed, and for that alone benefits from the choice of an experienced narrator. Bramhall animates a storyline that's all too real, and all too close to home, and he lends intimacy and immediacy to the epic melodrama that has now become present reality. Any other time--even six months ago--this would have been an urgent cautionary tale. Now, alas, it's the morning's news. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
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