IN THE second year of the Covid-19 pandemic this book by Veronique Tadjo, translated in collaboration with John Cullen, has extraordinary resonance and some of its descriptive sequences epitomise the impact of neoliberal globalisation on new pathogens.

Uncontrolled, and with no regard for the environment and nature, they have emerged due to relentless expansion of capitalist production and industrialisation in all parts of the globe.

Fossil fuel mining, mineral exploration and timber logging, along with industrial plantation farming and sprawling urbanisation have brought pathogens, which for thousands of years have existed in wildlife such as bats and other remotely domiciled animals, into contact with farm animals and then with humans through wildlife food markets and farming.