The Constant Gardener
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| Image:ConstantGardenerbookcover.jpg First UK edition cover | |
| Author | John le Carré |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Publication date | Jan 4, 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 557pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0340733373 |
- For the 2005 film of the same name, see The Constant Gardener (film).
The Constant Gardener is a 2001 novel by John le Carré. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing that there is more behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth behind her death, and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money.
Plot summary
Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Nairobi, is told that his activist wife, Tessa, was raped and killed while traveling with a doctor friend in a desolate region of Africa. Investigating on his own, Quayle discovers that her rape and murder, reportedly done by her friend, may have had more sinister roots.
Justin learns that Tessa uncovered a corporate scandal. KVH (Karel Vita Hudson), a large pharmaceutical company working under the cover of AIDS tests and treatments, is testing a tuberculosis drug that has severe side effects. Rather than help the test trial subjects and begin again with new medicine, KVH covered up the side effects reported in the tests, and only improved the drug in anticipation of a massive, multi-resistant tuberculosis outbreak.
Justin travels the world, often under assumed identities, in order to reconstruct the circumstances leading to Tessa's murder. As he begins to piece together Tessa's final report on the fraudulent drug tests, he learns that the roots of the conspiracy stretch further than he could have imagined; to a German pharmawatch company, an African aid station, and most disturbingly to him, corrupt politicians in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Film adaptation
The Constant Gardener was made into a major motion picture directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz in August of 2005 by Focus Films. The film grossed $33,565,375 in the U.S. box office and was rated R by the MPAA.[1] The movie has a running time of two hours and nine minutes.
Trivia
- John le Carré writes in the book's afterword, "By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard." [1]
- According to the IMDB, Tessa was based on Yvette Pierpaoli, famous social activist and charity worker killed in 1999.
Footnotes
de: Der ewige Gärtnerfr: The Constant Gardener hr: Brižni vrtlar
Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content
Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .
