The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

""The surface of the tongue turns brilliant red and then sloughs off, and is swallowed or spat out. [...] The tongue's skin may be torn off during rushes of the black vomit. The back of the throat and the lining of the windpipe may also slough off, and the dead tissue slides down the windpipe into the lungs or is coughed up with sputum.""

I need to begin with a disclaimer. This is a better book than the two stars I am rating it with. But I am angry at the author of this bestseller for using cheap literary devices and for being coy with the readers: titillating with purposefully gory language and phrasing. I am angry at the author for blatantly selling pornography of illness, suffering, and death under the guise of medical objectivity.

Richard Preston's Hot Zone (1994), which became a world-wide bestseller, is a non-fiction book about the extremely lethal Ebola virus. This is not Covid-19 whose lethality is in low-teen percentage range even for vulnerable people. Ebola has the death rate of about 90%, and its effects on the human body are terrifying: the author is truly enthusiastic about describing human bodies - still alive - dissolving in the hospital beds, with the accuracy and clarity of detail rivaling the anatomical precision in triple-X movies.

Now that I have vented, let me try to be objective. If we remove all the porn of gore and all patently irrelevant passages (see later) - the volume of this extraneous text amounts to well over 100 pages - we will have a truly great book telling stories of human fight against viruses. And it is not just Ebola. We also have stories about the Marburg and AIDS viruses.

It begins with a captivating tale of one Charles Monet who lived near Mount Elgon in Western Kenya. He might have gotten infected with Ebola-like Marburg virus when he was walking in the Kitum Cave. He died in the hospital but not before infecting Dr. Musoke, who miraculously survived. The gratuitous and excruciatingly gory details of Mr. Monet's last hours and particularly the vivid description of how the doctor became infected will provide a captivating read for the fetishists of death.

The narration moves to the USAMRID at Fort Detrick where we meet a cast of characters among the medical and military personnel. The focus is on Major Nancy Jaax and her family as well as on Col. C. J. Peters, MD (by the way, these are real people, if this makes any difference for the readers). Ms. Jaax works in the Biosafety Level 4 areas, the highest biohazard areas in existence. Areas like this are designed for dealing with lethal agents (viruses) for which there is no vaccine and no cure. The narrative about work in the labs is riveting.

Then comes the chapter about the emergence in 1976 of Sudan strain of the Ebola virus. We read about the first known victim, Mr. Yu G., and then a moving story of nurse Mayinga who contracted Ebola while she was caring for a dying nun, Sister M.E. Nurse Mayinga's blood has since been studied in numerous medical institutes all over the world.

Finally, we have the story of the Ebola outbreak in Reston, Virginia, where monkeys imported from Philippines began developing a highly lethal disease. This would be a totally fascinating story if the author did not do whatever possible to stretch the narrative material to artificially create the tension. Meandering plot threads made me almost lose patience with the book.

There is an incredible amount of completely irrelevant detail in the book. Can anyone enlighten me what purpose does the following information serve:

"Usually he wore faded blue jeans with a flaming Hawaiian shirt, along with sandals and dweebish white socks, [...]. His excuse for his lack of uniform was that he suffered from athlete's foot [...]"

I understand that authors of fiction books provide details about their characters to make them seem more real. But this is a real person - what is the purpose of telling us that he suffers from athlete's foot? There are hundreds of immaterial passages like that, whose only purpose is to pump up the volume of the text.

The author knows how to write well. It is so clear from the last chapter, with its accomplished prose, deep wisdom, perspective, and even a degree of lyricism. Why then does he stoop to the cheapest literary tricks in the rest of the book? Well, I have a theory, and it relates to readers' preferences, but I am not courageous enough to divulge it... So, instead of four solid stars that the book would deserve if it were thoroughly rewritten and condensed to one-third its length, the rating is

Two stars


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