Les forêts profondes — In the time of Ebola

The images of the 2014/2015 Ebola crisis travelled the world; today, an image from the exhibition "An Autumn in Macenta" graces the cover of Adrien Absolu's book, Les forêts profondes.

In late December 2013, a little boy from the edge of the world dies of symptoms too quickly dismissed as dysentery. No one knows that, in a remote corner of Guinean forest, the Ebola virus has just claimed its first victim in West Africa. That's where my story begins: in the village of Meliandou. Twelve months later, the Ebola virus has reached posterity — the kind reserved for great calamities, which, through the emotion they stir up, mark public opinion and sometimes an era. In the meantime, the Ebola epidemic has left 10,000 people dead. Throughout 2014, time seemed suspended in Guinea, in a kind of public-health state of emergency, where it was the humanitarian organisations (MSF, WHO) and the biosafety laboratories that dictated the Law. To limit infections, people stopped shaking hands to greet one another, buying smoked bushmeat from market stalls, and even going to school. And yet life went on. Soon the legends of the sacred forest and the rites of the ancestors came up against the great axioms of public health, in an inevitable clash of cultures. This account, written between Paris and Conakry, tells what really happened in Guinea in 2014 — and what has never been read.

The 2014/2015 Ebola crisis

When the first exchanges of information about Ebola cases in Guinea began to circulate, no one knew this epidemic would be of a scale never seen before. That's the subject of Adrien Absolu's first book, published by JC Lattès. For the cover of "", the author chose one of our photos from the exhibition "An autumn in Macenta".

A book to be read without moderation to better understand this epidemic, which, in more ways than one, lastingly changed West Africa and the intervention methods of local and international humanitarian actors.

More about Les forêts profondes

Publisher: JC Lattès. Title: — EAN: — Release: 05/10/2016