Three-Letter Plague: A Young Man's Journey Through a Great Epidemic by Jonny Steinberg

ISBN: 9781868422883

PUBLISHER: Jonathan Ball Publishers; 2007

FORMAT: Paperback; 342 pages

DESCRIPTION: At the end of a steep gravel road in one of the remotest corners of Lusikisiki in the old Transkei lies the village of Ithanga. Home to a few hundred villagers, the majority of them unemployed, it is inconceivably poor. In the broader world, most would consider it entirely inconsequential.

It is to here that award-winning author Jonny Steinberg travels to explore the lives of a community caught up in a battle to survive the ravages of HIV/Aids. He befriends Sizwe, a young local man who runs a spaza shop who refuses to be tested for Aids despite the existence of a well-run testing and anti-retroviral programme. It is this apparent illogic that becomes the key to understanding the dynamics that thread their way through a complex and traditional rural community.

As Steinberg grapples to get closer to finding answers that remain maddeningly just out of reach, he realizes that he must look within himself to unravel certain riddles.

Following on from the huge critical success of Midlands and The Number, both of which won the Alan Paton Award, Steinberg has written another masterpiece which will be simultaneously released in the United States and South Africa.