Patrick Deville's Novel Resurrects Forgotten Pasteurian Yersin

Patrick Deville's novel 'Peste et Choléra' (Seuil, coll. Fiction & Cie) resurrects Alexandre Yersin, the forgotten discoverer of the plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis, 1894). Deville's writing is swift and exploratory, mirroring Yersin's life. The narrative follows Yersin from his birth in the Swiss canton of Vaud, through medical studies in Germany and Paris, to his work with Pasteur's assistant Émile Roux. Despite Roux and Albert Calmette's efforts to recruit him for the nascent Institut Pasteur in Saïgon, Yersin refuses, preferring exploration over sedentary research. He becomes a ship's doctor on the Saïgon-Manille line, then an explorer in Indochina, conducting epidemiological, geographical, and meteorological observations. Deville portrays Yersin as a 'ghost of the future,' a novelist's device to reclaim a figure erased from history. The novel is also a self-portrait, continuing Deville's series of biographical works (Equatoria, Kampuchéa). Yersin's mother Fanny receives his letters detailing his adventures. The book is described as a major work on memory and one of the strongest of the literary season.