Due Preparations for the Plague

by Hospital, Janette Turner

• ISBN13: 9780393057645
• ISBN10: 039305764X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-01
• Publisher: W W NORTON

Summary

A major literary voice spins a psychological terror tale in the mode of John Le Carre. Lowell, a single father, is haunted by the memory of a hijacked Paris-New York flight on which his mother was killed when he was a teenager. A stranger, Samantha, has recently begun harassing him with phone calls about information from declassified documents. She is obsessed with learning the whole truth about Air France 64. "I was on that flight. I was six years old. I have a right," she says. "What can be worse than not knowing?" Janette Turner Hospital's electrifying new novel is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, of sexual and political passions, and of individual and national complicities in the age of terrorism. She probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering, and the painful meaning of survival.

Author Biography

Janette Turner Hospital is the author of six previous novels, including Oyster and The Last Magician, both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her story collections are Isobars and Dislocations, which won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Fiction Award. A two-time finalist for the Australian National Book Award, Hospital is the recipient of numerous other honors and has been published in twelve languages. Originally from Australia, she has lived in Canada, the U.K., France, and India, but now holds a permanent position at the University of South Carolina, where she is Professor and Distinguished Writer in Residence

Table of Contents

BOOK I OLD MOLE	3	(44)
BOOK II FOG	47	(54)
BOOK III CODE NAME: BLACK DEATH	101	(68)
BOOK IV VANISHING POINTS	169	(52)
BOOK V JOURNAL OF S: ENCRYPTED	221	(54)
BOOK VI IN THE MARSH	275	(28)
BOOK VII THE DECAMERON TAPE	303	(62)
BOOK VIII AFTERMATH	365