Dark Continents: A Novel

"Haunting, unnerving, canny and uncanny, is a gripping, genre-swapping mélange of urban myth and recent history." -Gregory Maguire, author of A young closeted realtor. An aging imperialist. A child psychiatrist and his bug-eating ward. All of them: tied to a transgender activist who is falling ill with unexplainable symptoms-purple lesions and light sensitivity. All of them, the first players in an outbreak that will span the far reaches of the Congo Basin to the clapboards of Provincetown and New York City at its grittiest. "Set in the age of AIDS and filled with a gallery of interesting characters, is quite the page-turner and Wilber has done an amazing amount of research-ranging from the scientific tracking of disease to the history of New York to life in Zaïre-which he beautifully incorporates into the text. There's a huge amount of imagination in this book and an impressive ability to weave an engrossing complicated plot. I must give him a hand and alert your attention to an emerging writer with considerable talent." -George Hodgman, author of "If Bram Stoker had lived in the twentieth century, there's no question he would have sent Dracula into the dark heart of Africa. Wilber succeeds in infusing a classic with fresh blood: Joseph Conrad meets the wild 1970s and the origins of AIDS. What a great idea-a nuanced horror novel that shows the good old Count in a whole new light." -Oliver Pötzsch, author of "A smart, thoughtful, haunting metaphor of the plague years, but also a good old-fashioned page-turning thriller." -William J. Mann, author of "Absolutely ravishing. Suspenseful, funny, and at times romantic in all of its painful truth, an exhilarating tour de force, leaving you thirsty for another." -Mario Alberto Zambrano, author of