The Plague Cycle

For much of recorded history, travelers on the Nile considered the vast swampland called the Sudd to be an impassable barrier (al-sadd, from which “Sudd” derives, is akin to “obstacle” in Arabic). The Sudd frustrated countless attempts to locate the source of the Nile. The Plague Cycle recounts an outbreak of Ebola virus within the ambit of the Sudd.  Its narrator is a local staff member of an international NGO who digs graves at a quarantine camp. Acquainted with several tribal languages, as well as Arabic and Swahili, the narrator relates all in a version of “global English”—globish.