The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre

Another novel that touches the real world in a way that confronts. John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener is a thriller of sorts - not terribly violent- really there were very few instances of gore but the violence indicated the level of greed and exploitation that the perpetrators were driven to keep hidden. This novel is set mostly in Africa where the political, commercial, and humanitarian agendas combine and sometimes conflict. Here the issue is whether a pharmaceutical company is falsifying and short circuiting the scientific review process for a new drug that is reputed to address a strain of tuburculosis that is resistant to standard antibiotics by making it available on a wide scale to the poor in Kenya. Is this a large scale medical experiment designed to work out any bugs in the product before making it available for sale in the West? Le Carre presents many faces of this dilemna while keeping the reader fascinated by the complicated relationships between the diverse characters who come from around the world. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, spent too many hours doing nothing but reading it, and also found some meat to chew on related to my work as a consultant to nonprofit organizations - some of whom work in just these kinds of communities.

One quote speaks of a consortium of representatives of donor nations in East Africa:
"It fosters efficacy, or effectiveness, in the aid field. In aid work, effectiveness is pretty much the gold standard. Compassion's a given,.....how much of each dollar from each donor nation actually reaches its target, and how much wasteful overlap and unhelpful competition exists between agencies on the ground. It grapples, as we all do, alas, with the aid world's three R's: reduplication, rivalry, rationalization. It balances overheads against productivity and...makes the odd tentative recommendation, given that...it has no executive powers and no powers of enforcement." (84)

For many them's fighting words because so many nonprofit organizations exist because of the passion, compassion, zeal, applied Christianity (or other faith based impulse) and altruism that motivates the founders. However, Le Carre has articulated a clarion call for humility, collaboration, and pragmatism that could bring real solutions to humanitarian crises wherever they exist.

So, here's a novel that is quite relevant to what I do although that's not what made me take it off the library shelf. I am grateful to have read it.

John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener, (c) 2001, Scribner. NY.