Plague and Cholera

While Alexandre Yersin is most often identified with the eponymous Yersinia pestis, the bubonic-plague bacillus he identified in Hong Kong in 1894, in Patrick Deville's fictional biography Plague and Cholera,this is but one event in an action-packed life that makes for a similarly action-packed adventure of a book.

Winner of the Prix Fémina, Prix Fnac, and Prix des Prix, Deville's best-selling book, now in a translation by J. A. Underwood, tells the story of the Swiss-born, naturalized-French doctor who first joined the newly-created Pasteur Institute in 1889 and discovers with Émile Roux the diphtheric toxin.