The End of October
A novel
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4.1 • 480 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—a riveting thriller and “all-too-convincing chronicle of science, espionage, action and speculation” (The Wall Street Journal).
At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an act of biowarfare. And a rogue experimenter in man-made diseases is preparing his own terrifying solution.
As already-fraying global relations begin to snap, the virus slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions and decimating the population. With his own wife and children facing diminishing odds of survival, Henry travels from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to his home base at the CDC in Atlanta, searching for a cure and for the origins of this seemingly unknowable disease. The End of October is a one-of-a-kind thriller steeped in real-life political and scientific implications, filled with the insight that has been the hallmark of Wright’s acclaimed nonfiction and the full-tilt narrative suspense that only the best fiction can offer.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We’ve all become familiar with the chilling idea of a microscopic, totally invisible enemy taking us down. But for the hero of Lawrence Wright’s gripping thriller, studying infectious diseases like Ebola and SARS is all in a day’s work. When a deadly new strain emerges from an Indonesian internment camp, brilliant and empathetic World Health Organization epidemiologist Henry Parsons and his colleagues put their lives on the line to protect the world from a devastating outbreak. Wright—author of the chilling 9/11 history The Looming Tower—is a meticulous novelist, fortifying the action with impeccable research and terrifyingly realistic details. The End of October takes us on a white-knuckle trip around the globe, as governments and international organizations struggle to contain a disease that threatens the very fabric of modern society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On a trip to the site of an "unusual cluster of adolescent fatalities in a refugee camp" in Indonesia, World Health Organization doctor Henry Parsons, the hero of this multifaceted thriller from Pulitzer Prize winner Wright (God Save Texas), discovers the compound decimated by an unknown disease. Parsons sounds the alarm that the virus responsible may have spread after learning that his driver, who went inside the camp, was allowed to leave the area. The stakes rise when Parsons finds out that the driver was headed for Saudi Arabia to participate in a pilgrimage to Mecca, thus potentially exposing millions to the fatal infection. Meanwhile, the Saudis and Iranians are at each other's throats, and a career NSC official fears that Putin's Russia is preparing a cyberattack that would cripple the U.S. Wright pulls few punches and imbues even walk-on characters with enough humanity that their fate will matter to readers. This timely literary page-turner shows Wright is on a par with the best writers in the genre. Author tour.
Customer Reviews
Very poignant for these current times
I did find that it took awhile for the storyline to progress and I found it difficult initially to fully engage for the first few chapters. However, after those initial slower chapters that were heavy on character development rather than plot building, the pacing seemed to pick up and the story moved a long at a much more engrossing pace. If you can get past the first few chapters and hang in there it is a worthwhile read and endlessly fascinating. There were a lot of big jumps in the timeline/ storyline that I would have liked to have been addressed better and built out more, rather than just expecting the reader to catch up and fill in the blanks (seems a more appropriate format for a movie rather than a novel), but, overall a good, solid read. It was very well researched and informed and gives one a better understanding of the nuanced dynamics of pandemics/ novel diseases and the extreme risk they pose to our society, which most behave as if our way of life is invincible. Reading this book I now see how a novel virus could quickly get beyond anyone’s control and wreak complete havoc on every dimension of life. One of the biggest complications with pandemics being the fear and suspicion of others which this book highlights very realistically. In most crisis, people tend to come together and support one another. With an invisible deadly virus, it instead distances communities so that they don’t have the societal safety net that has gotten them through past disasters. We are seeing that now as our country has never been more divided or simply outright hostile to each other. It’s truly sad to see what humanity has chosen to be during this Covid crisis with so many examples of hate, violence and ignorance. I do recommend this read not only for entertainment but for better understanding of the current crisis we are facing with Covid and why the measures that are being taken are necessary to ensure not only our survival but our way of life.
An inconsistently thrilling novel that reveals its ending too soon.
The story started out as a really enthralling but scary look into the possibilities of our future, but as it got about halfway through, the characters and the plot seemed to take on the feeling of a “disaster movie” with unlikely scenarios. I wish the author had focused on some of the other characters more and that he did more world-building on a big part of the story, but instead focused on a plot point that seemed to come out of nowhere. However, the parts that were written well, the author definitely exceeded in.
Very topical for these days we’re living in!
Am unnervingly accurate of another pandemic that could go waaaaay worse than what we’ve wheat been through, but that could STILL happen, if humanity is not careful!
A great read, thriller-like and totally engaging. Wow!!