Who outside doctors, Pasteurians, historians of medicine or of Indochina would spontaneously be passionate interest in the life and work of Alexandre Yersin, formerly Swiss citizen, naturalized French, who discovered in space only a few days of the plague bacillus "Yersinia pestis" and great explorer, discoverer, biologist emeritus belonging to the band who created the Institut Pasteur and its ramifications in the world? The fabulous talent Patrick Deville is to turn what could have been a biography of an extraordinary man, a true novel, jostling passing many codes of panegyric exercise. Yes this book is a very rare moment of literature. While the argument is given by the life of Yersin, but the style is original and profound. The sentences are short, almost dry, precise and concise. Not a word too, but instead the word he always faut.Le documentary work of P. Deville had to be huge! At the end of the book, I thought that ultimately Yersin itself (although I have not read it) would probably wrote his autobiography in this way: a style corresponding to his character, lively, brave, devilishly precise incredibly optimiste.Près 80 years old Europe pass through this literary prism, three wars, two world, colonial tropics, not sad, the terra incognita that disappeared over the progress of Livingstone, Stanley and other Yersin precisely. This book is the novel of a life of adventure, science, humanity and wisdom too. This novel, and there is the great talent of the author, but also that of our roots, all the stories carried by our families. As can be imagined, the wisdom of Yersin is communicated to the writer who transcribed in the beautiful chapters of the end of the novel. The writer of the rest provides a fun role in "Ghost in taupe leather notebook." If that was the lesson of this life, this beautiful text: fast open this metaphoric notebook that allows to step back on the events, to ask the right questions and make sense of our lives on the basis of lessons that we receive from all of our predecessors, and as Yersin approach things with this energy that should be devilishly communicative!
