The diagnosis is devastating: the extremely dangerous Marburg virus, a Risk Group 4 pathogen of the family Filoviridae, or filoviruses.Įverything you need to know about this family of viruses, for now, is that you don’t want to mess around with any of its members. Unlike his colleague and patient, he doesn’t particularly feel like dying, so instead of working closely with his patient, he sands a sample of his blood to two labs-in South Africa and in Atlanta, Georgia. He hemorrhages badly since his blood refuses to clot and, consequently, all of his organs begin to fail, one by one. Shem Musoke is unable to do anything in Monet’s case and, before too long, Monet dies. He is flown to Nairobi Hospital, but already on the plane he’s in such a bad state that we’ll simply decide to skip the description.Īt Nairobi Hospital, he begins to hemorrhage, and gets some of his blood and vomit on his doctor, Shem Musoke. In case you don’t know, the Kitum Cave is one of the five “elephant caves” on Mount Elgon-all of them rich with salts, all of them frequented by these majestic creatures who go deep inside the cave to dig for salt ever since time immemorial.Ĭharles Monet’s decision to explore the cave, however, was a fatal mistake: a week after the visit, he starts vomiting and becomes ill with a serious fever. It’s January 1980, and a Frenchman by the name of Charles Monet (a pseudonym) decides to visit Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon in Western Kenya, on the border with Uganda. Part One: The Shadow of Mount Elgon 1980: The Marburg Virus and One Unlucky Frenchmen Its subtitle-a terrifying true story-more than suits it: enthralling, fast-paced and exceptionally well-written, the book would have been an incomparable thriller even if it hadn’t been based on factual events. The first major non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, may be dealing with gory quadruple murder, but, in terms of sheer horror, it has nothing on Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, his 1994 account of the first emergence on US soil of one of the deadliest viruses known to men: Ebola. In addition, he has also received an award from the American Institute of Physics. Preston is the only nondoctor to have received the Centers for Disease Control’s Champion of Prevention Award. He was also chosen to edit and complete the unfinished manuscript of Micro, Richard Crichton’s final novel. He has written seven exceptional nonfiction books- First Light, American Steel, The Hot Zone, The Demon in the Freezer, The Wild Trees, Panic in Level 4, and Crisis in the Red Zone-and a well-received novel, The Cobra Event.

Richard Preston is an American journalist and bestselling scientific author, a contributor to The New Yorker ever since 1985.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston