Into Africa
"I thought I would never write about Ebola again," Preston told China Daily."But when Ebola broke out in Africa in 2014, I quickly realized this was a very new kind of Ebola outbreak. Unlike the earlier ones, this was a widespread, dangerous epidemic, which had the potential to turn into a pandemic.
"As a reporter, I felt the only way I could understand this event was to go to Africa, see for myself and talk to the people who had been in the middle of this crisis."
It was later shown that Ebola's outbreak between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa was the largest since the contagion was first discovered in 1976.
Preston arrived in West Africa in January 2015, when the virus was on the wane, and the danger had decreased. He talked to survivors who, despite "complete trauma and exhaustion", were still able to talk about their experiences.
In the following years, he interviewed more than 200 people related to the outbreaks, and visited laboratories in the United States and Europe, trying to learn about the key events during the outbreaks, down to details of the exact time everything happened.
In 2019, Crisis in the Red Zone was published in the US. The Chinese version was published in 2020, and has achieved 9.1 points out of 10 on China's popular review site Douban.
"Crisis in the Red Zone is an amazing, spellbinding tale of horror and compassion, wasted opportunities and human kindness," writes Sean, a reader who bought the book online. "I am amazed and appalled at the blunders, arrogance, love, compassion, and betrayal shown by the very real people battling this deadly outbreak."
Zhang Jiren, the editor of the book's Chinese version from Shanghai Translation Publishing House, says: "When you open the first page, you will keep reading it until the end. It's about science, about the virus, but at the end of the day it tells a good story."
It was Zhang who introduced Preston's previous book, The Hot Zone, to China in 2016. It has sold about 200,000 copies, half of which were bought in 2020 following the outbreak of COVID-19.
He decided to publish the second book, Crisis in the Red Zone, in China as well after reading it and found it "as high in quality as the previous book". So far, about 40,000 copies have been sold in China. E-book sales have also been good.
Douban user Shudaizi says: "If The Hot Zone shows Ebola through patients' suffering, then Crisis in the Red Zone further displays the virus through medical workers' selfless and helpless sacrifice. It is full of human tenderness."
Zhang says that the second book has a wider field of vision compared with the first one. "It elaborates on Ebola's past, present and future. By comparing the Ebola outbreaks in 1976 and 2014, we can view the things from historical and current perspectives," he says."The author also makes a prediction about the outbreak of a new virus, which, you could argue, came to pass with the outbreak of COVID-19."
