The Constant Gardener

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 there is something behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money.

The plot was based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria.

Plot summary

Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Nairobi, is told that his activist wife, Tessa, was killed while traveling with a doctor friend in a desolate region of Africa. Investigating on his own, Quayle discovers that her murder, reportedly done by her friend, may have had more sinister roots.

Justin learns that Tessa uncovered a corporate scandal involving medical experimentation in Africa. 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 NGO, an African aid station, and most disturbingly to him, corrupt politicians in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

John le Carré writes in the book's afterword: 'by comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard'.^[1] The book is dedicated to Yvette Pierpaoli, a French activist who died during the course of her aid work.^[2]

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 Features. The film grossed $33,565,375 in the US box office ($82,466,670 worldwide).

Footnotes

1. ^ le Carré, John (2005). The Constant Gardener. Pocket Star. Afterword. ISBN 1-4165-0390-0. 
2. ^ Honan, William H. (April 20, 1999). "Yvette Pierpaoli, 60, Aid Worker Who Devoted Life to Refugees". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/20/world/yvette-pierpaoli-60-aid-worker-who-devoted-life-to-refugees.html.