Plague and Cholera

A captivating novel about the brilliant scientist and polymath Alexandre Yersin, combining fact, fiction, science, art, and philosophy.

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, who have sewn their jewels 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 protégé of Louis Pasteur, he focused his exceptional mind on a great medical problem. In 1894, on a Hong Kong hospital forecourt, he identified the bacterium that causes bubonic plague and worked on vaccination; the bacterium was later named Yersinia pestis in his honor.

Swiss by birth and trained in Germany and France, Yersin is the son of empiricism and endeavor, but he has a romantic hunger for adventure, fueled by tales of Livingstone and Conrad, and sets sail for Asia.

A true traveler 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.