The most recommended books about leprosy

If I hear someone who has never studied medieval history once in their life refer to the “Dark Ages” as a time when “Science” was banned by the Church one more time, I will actually die, and this book does an amazing job of explaining how ignorant those old myths are.

Falk laces this book with delicious tidbits of the weird and wonderful of medieval scientific (or, to be nerdy, what we would call natural philosophical) ideas. Goat fat enemas? Sure. But there is also the transcription of Persian manuscripts, the invention of mechanical clocks and eyeglasses, and the creation of the University.

The book brings to life a vibrant, interconnected intellectual world and is a testament to how clever medieval people were in circumstances that were much more difficult than our own.

This is the first in Antonia Hodgson’s so-good-you-could-eat-it Thomas Hawkins series. It’s set in London in 1727 and the plot revolves around a likeable rake, Hawkins, whose dedication to dice, booze, and women leads him to ruin – but with the help of others. Finding himself in the notorious Marshalsea Prison – think Alcatraz but without the water and with leprosy and lice instead – and you have the makings of a wonderful prison-break type story. Hodgson’s characters – Hawkins, but also his love interest, Kitty Sparks – aren’t just alive but bring the past alive with them. It’s like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones with the vividness of the Sixties, but then, if you know anything about eighteenth-century London, you’ll know that it was pretty wild place. This, after all, was long before the Victorians came along with their rather puritan social mores.

Graham Greene is considered by many to be the acknowledged master of expat tales. This is actually one of his lesser-known novels. It tells the story of Querry, an internationally famous architect suffering from terminal ennui. Life no longer holds meaning for him, or even pleasure. He takes a boat up river in Africa to its last stop, a leper village in the Congo. There, he attempts to lose himself by helping the indigenous afflicted, and in so doing begins to cure his own ills as well. But fate and the white community can’t let well enough alone. 

This was a lovely slice of life read with the captivating setting of rural Japan at the start of World War II along with a coming of age plot. It was a very poignant reminder that life is filled with goodbyes and how we acknowledge and accept that can make all the difference.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is a fantastic tale of two worlds. There is the Land, a mystical place of good versus evil, with inhabitants who use supernatural means to summon help against the darkness, and our world where the writer Thomas Covenant lives as an outcast to keep his leprosy in remission and to avoid his hostile neighbors. When he is magically transported to the Land and its people beg him to fight the evil for them, he refuses, believing it is a suicidal delusion that will reactivate his disease and kill him. The troubled hero Covenant could not be more compelling, or his dilemma better written, especially as the true-blue inhabitants of the Land struggle to understand why he can’t do the right thing.

I love the unexpected beauty and horror of this book which is a collection of stories and a novella. The title also made me wonder, how do you escape a leper colony? Author Tiphanie Yanique is a Caribbean writer whose stunningly poetic voice haunted me long after I finished reading her book. As I read it, I imagined the narrator's Caribbean accent soaking into every syllable. In the key short story, Yanique sets us down in a leper colony on a deserted island for the dying and yet manages to leave room for the miraculous as well. Describing one leper she says, "And when a man with no hands claims that he can fly, you listen."

Have your tissues ready!

Alexis, a present-day heroine, travels to her mother’s childhood home in Greece, intent upon learning the family’s hidden story. Arriving there, she spies the island of Spinalonga, once an actual leper colony. Hislop then switches time periods, taking the reader to the mid-twentieth century, when leprosy and war tore families apart.

I found Hislop’s writing gentle yet wrenching, and I was heartbroken by scenes between mothers and children who had to separate forever due to illness. But I was moved, too, by the strength, resilience, and capacity for love shown by many of the characters.

I enjoy novels that are based on history, with protagonists who are tested to their very limits. I won’t soon forget this book, and I bet you won’t either!

A tropical forest in Africa is the epicentre of a bizarre and very troubling phenomenon. Through a sort of “leak” in space-time, everything is slowly turning to crystal, and this “disease” will eventually seep out into the rest of the world. An English doctor goes on an Apocalypse Now-style journey into the forest to try and understand. Ballard’s sci-fi classic is as weird and thought-provoking as always, and the forest itself is a palpable presence throughout. 

Also published in 1893, the same year as Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island. Marsden, a London-born nurse, found her vocation tending to sick and abandoned Russians. The book offers a remarkable portrait of the remotest reaches of the Russian Empire, as well as the author’s indomitable spirit.

This deep dive into the people that medieval Europe sidelined is absolutely indispensable for understanding society as a whole.

I get frustrated because when people think about the medieval period, they assume that it was a time when everyone just quietly played along with whatever the Church said, and everyone was a straight white Christian keeping quiet. This book goes and finds the people that the medieval period wanted hidden and brings them to light.

I also like that it helps us to consider that we still partake in the same othering behaviours now. It’s full of fascinating primary sources, and I find it totally absorbing.