{"id":7196,"date":"2018-04-11T07:01:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T11:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2018-04-11T07:01:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T11:01:49","slug":"fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"*****Fever"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abandoned

photo: Lane Pearman, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Written by Deon Meyer, translated from the Afrikaans by KL Seegers \u2013 Opening with the lines, \u201cI want to tell you about my father\u2019s murder. I want to tell you who killed him and why,\u201d this noted South African author takes a good long while to get to the actual killing of Willem Storm, but he uses the time well.<\/p>\n

The world has been devastated by the Fever\u2014a new infectious disease that spreads rapidly and catastrophically. A few people have a genetic quirk that saves them, but 95 percent of the world\u2019s population has died. Willem and his son Nico, hiding out in a remote South African cave, survive. The big challenge is \u201cnow what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Willem has a vision for what should come next. He and his son fill a tractor-trailer with useful items they find as they traverse the countryside. They aren\u2019t the only survivors, of course, and food becomes increasingly hard to find. With a pre-Fever population of approximately 56 million, South Africa alone would have a residual population of 2.8 million.<\/p>\n

How people react in such a desperate situation reveals their fundamental values. Willem Storm envisions a new egalitarian society built on democratic principles. He finds a suitable location, and he and Nico drive the countryside, leaving posters asking people of good will to come. Gradually, they do, and they name their new community Amanzi, \u201cwater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teenage Nico is torn between his father\u2019s idealism and the aggressive values of a new arrival in the community, Domingo. He has a past he won\u2019t talk about, works with military precision, and an affinity for weapons. He consistently argues for more security precautions, because the threats are real\u2014packs of wild dogs, marauding motorcycle gangs, and murderous thieves. \u201cPeople are animals,\u201d Domingo says.<\/p>\n

Amanzi\u2019s creation is an amazing adventure story. The book may be 530 pages long, but it is very hard (truly, almost impossible) to put down\u2014at least for someone like me who is interesting in how things work, or don\u2019t. Nico narrates most of it, though a great many other residents recount their experiences both before Amanzi and in the community, gradually building up a \u201c360-degree\u201d perspective on Willem, Domingo, Nico, and Amanzi. Only in the last 20 pages are the most horrifying crimes of the novel revealed, and these are the least satisfying pages of all.<\/p>\n

If you are intrigued by the situations and challenges presented in post-apocalyptic thrillers like Cormac McCarthy\u2019s The Road<\/em> or Stephen King\u2019s The Stand<\/em>, this novel is sure to get you thinking.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Deon Meyer, translated from the Afrikaans by KL Seegers \u2013 Opening with the lines, \u201cI want to tell you about my father\u2019s murder. I want to tell you who killed him and why,\u201d this noted South African author … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Fever - what if 95% of the world's population died? How would you survive? Thrilling adventure story set in South Africa.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,40,126],"tags":[1293,1294,1292,415],"class_list":["post-7196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-deon-meyer","tag-fever","tag-south-africa","tag-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2NkiT-fever","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7198,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions\/7198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}