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A review by half_book_and_co
In the Company of Men by Véronique Tadjo
4.0
"When people on the outside learned you were working with Ebola patients, they didn't want to come near you anymore. You lost all your friends. When you went home, you were alone with your family. My daughter had problems at school; no one wanted to play with her during recess. Her fellow students had heard the rumours circulating in the neighbourhood: the medical staff was behind all these deaths; the President of the Republic had supposedly payed them large sums to reduce the local population and thus get rid of the poor. Ebola, they said, didn't exist."
In 2014 there were Ebola outbreaks in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In the course of two years more than 11.000 people died horrific deaths. Véronique Tadjo has written a polyphonic novel about this event. In each chapter another protagonist steps forward and tells their story: a doctor and nurse working with Ebola patients, a poet losing his fiancée to the virus, a young man burrying bodies, a distant relative who is asked to take in a child which has been orphaned. But there is also the virus itself getting a voice , the bat which has been demonized, and - centrally though - the Baobab tree. Ranging from matter-of-factly to poetic, these voices draw a vivid picture and pose questions about science and other belief systems, humanity's place in the world, community and support.
In 2014 there were Ebola outbreaks in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In the course of two years more than 11.000 people died horrific deaths. Véronique Tadjo has written a polyphonic novel about this event. In each chapter another protagonist steps forward and tells their story: a doctor and nurse working with Ebola patients, a poet losing his fiancée to the virus, a young man burrying bodies, a distant relative who is asked to take in a child which has been orphaned. But there is also the virus itself getting a voice , the bat which has been demonized, and - centrally though - the Baobab tree. Ranging from matter-of-factly to poetic, these voices draw a vivid picture and pose questions about science and other belief systems, humanity's place in the world, community and support.