I was rushed to pick out a book to read as I headed out the door on Wednesday evening and I pulled out
In the Company of Men before I had a chance to second guess myself. Somewhere I had heard something about it but I didn't remember where or what. I mostly made note of it because it was from Côte d'Ivoire, a country I had not yet read a book from. And then a few months ago I was visiting my dad and he had, independently, come across a copy and set it aside for me. (This isn't so surprising in that he often sets aside books for me and knows I'm interested in African literature, though it's not very common that he sets aside a book I was already seeking.) But I still didn't know anything about it, so when I sat down on the subway and opened it to read on Wednesday evening I almost had to laugh. I had been looking for a slim book that would be quick reading and I had, unknowingly, selected a book about the twenty-teens Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It was a slim book and it did turn out to be a quick read, but it certainly wasn't what I'd imagined when I pulled it off the shelf.
In the Company of Men tells the story of the Ebola outbreak through many different voices. Each chapter is narrated by a different individual who has been affected by the disease – those who've been infected, the doctors and nurses treating them, those who've escaped infection, the researchers investigating the virus, those who are paid to bury the dead, and even some non-humans the baobab tree, the bat who carries the virus, and Ebola itself are given voices to tell their piece of the story. The book is clearly informed by real events (I stopped midway to read a short online history of Ebola and immediately saw reflections in the text) and it is, in a way, instructional. But it's also poetic and felt, in some way, like a call to action.
In the Company of Men was originally published in 2017, but the English translation just came out this year. The acknowledgements in the English edition note how Ebola research served as a precedent to inform Covid-19 research, echoing something I heard on the radio just this morning.
