The Hot Zone (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Preston
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Science
- Time of Work: 1960-1993
- Setting: Kenya; Zaire; Sudan; Washington, D.C.; and Reston, Virginia
- Principal Characters: Charles Monet, Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax, Colonel Jerry Jaax, Eugene Johnson, Dan Dalgard, Peter Jahrling, Tom Geisbert, Colonel Clarence James Peters, Major General Philip K. Russell
- Genres: Nonfiction, Science and technology
- Subjects: Africa or Africans, Doctors, Cancer, Diseases, Plague, Biology or biologists, Human anatomy, Venereal diseases, Monkeys, Viruses
- Locales: Washington, D.C., Sudan, Kenya, Zaire, Reston, VA
Those who read the opening chapter of The Hot Zone may find it difficult to realize that what they are reading is not science fiction but documented scientific fact. Charles Monet, a fifty-six-year-old expatriate Frenchman living in western Kenya near the Nzoia River, is spending his Christmas vacation on Mount Elgon with a woman from nearby Eldoret.
On New Year’s morning of 1980, the pair wander into Kitum Cave, host at night to herds of elephants that come for the salt they can ferret out of its rocks, which they pulverize with their tusks. Monet and his friend spend...
[The entire page is 1956 words long]
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