How Contagion Works
Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises - The short essay that helped change the Covid-19 debate
Paolo Giordano
How Contagion Works
Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises - The short essay that helped change the Covid-19 debate
Paolo Giordano
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Omschrijving
A rallying cry for a new form of global solidarity in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic. Written from the Italian lockdown.
'Reinforced my sense of hope in humanity' Philippe Sands, bestselling author of EAST WEST STREET
Sublimely elegant, provocatively simple, deeply troubling. In one short hour, in the midst of this difficult moment, Giordano reinforced my sense of hope in humanity, in the one and the many.
Part analysis, part journal, perhaps the first from the new world we all share. It is modest, lucid, calm, informed, directly helpful in trying to think about where we are now... The literature of the time after begins here.
A slim guide to understanding this virus and preparing ourselves for what comes next... Taking a breather from bewildering statistics and terrible tales of contagion to read Giordano's book was a jolt of brevity and simplicity... Giordano's short book takes concepts that have been dancing away in our minds, just out of reach, and lines them up neatly.
The stark and poetic prose of Paolo Giordano's essay How Contagion Works conveys the existential angst of an Italian intellectual as he comes to terms with quarantine: the vulnerabilities, missed opportunities, loneliness, fear of annihilation and the realisation that humanity's supporting structures are 'a house of cards'.
'Potent and original'
The urgency behind Giordano's book is of a different kind, stemming more from the need to preserve the present than to explain it... Much like Sigmund Freud wrote down his dreams when he woke, before they faded, Giordano sought to document, in real time, his experience of the pandemic.
Urgent, powerful writing... I could have folded the corner on every page.
A timely, vital and inspiring read.
Paolo Giordano's HOW CONTAGION WORKS is a lodestar for all of us seeking to find our way through this pandemic. Giordano, a mathematician, seamlessly combines lyrical prose and epidemiologic concepts in a clear and compassionate way, recalling at times the work of Jorge Luis Borges. HOW CONTAGION WORKS illuminates a clear and calm path forward as we navigate this strange new world.
Brilliant...[Giordano] urges us to be kind and see the pandemic not as an accident or a scourge, but as foreseeable, and
proof of how our world has become inextricably interconnected. The outbreak's origins reside with us, the planet's most invasive species
PAOLO GIORDANO is a physicist and a bestselling writer. His first novel, THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS, was translated into more than 40 languages worldwide and won the Premio Strega (the Italian Booker).
Paolo is the author of the forthcoming novel HEAVEN AND EARTH and of the pamphlet HOW CONTAGION WORKS, a rallying cry inspired by the recent CoV-19 epidemic. He is also the creator of the new HBO series WE ARE WHO WE ARE, co-written and directed by Luca Guadagnino.
He holds a master's degree and a PhD in theoretical physics.