The Virus

The Black Spring Eyewear Press Group has signed a book deal with Jonathan Lloyd at the Curtis Brown Agency to publish the UK edition of Stanley Johnson’s The Virus - paperback and eBook. On his collaboration with Black Spring Johnson says, ‘I am absolutely delighted that this dynamic independent press is publishing my thriller The Virus.’


Initially published in 1982 as The Marburg Virus, Johnson’s The Virus reveals uncanny parallels with the current corona virus: the outbreak of a mysterious and deadly disease, the origins of which are traced to a medical student infected by a green monkey. It features an epidemiologist as its hero and a desperate search for a vaccine…

In the afterword to his re-released The Virus Johnson, 79, says, ‘Will the fight again COVID-19 be as successful as my fictional hero was in fighting the Marburg Virus?...Thinking back to my own book, and its eventual happy ending, I can’t help feeling that Governments around the world, our own included, need to be ruthlessly focussed on the search for an antidote or a vaccine. Without in any way diminishing the importance of precautionary measures of containment or mitigation, mass immunization would surely prove a crucial factor in stopping the spread of COVID-19 or in preventing further outbreaks, e.g. the “second wave” we are hearing about’.