The Hot Zone

Richard Preston Doubleday, £ 14.99, pp 336 ISBN 0-385-40631-2

The Hot Zone tells the filovirus story, from the first recorded outbreak of Marburg virus disease in Germany and Yugoslavia in 1967 to the author's trip along Africa's “AIDS highway” to Mount Elgon, on the border between Kenya and Uganda, in the summer of 1993.

Was Kitmun Cave on Mount Elgon the origin of Marburg virus? A French expatriate who died in 1980 and a Danish boy who died seven years later both visited the cave before they developed Marburg …