Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind For 500,00 Years

The fascinating inside story of malaria - the fever and the mosquito - and their relationship with humans through the ages, revealing why it is on the rise across the world.

Malaria is on the move. It already infects 300 million new people each year, killing nearly 1 million. With climate change it is moving into new regions of the world. We've known how to prevent this devastating disease for more than a century, so why aren't we doing more to eradicate it?

Sonia Shah takes us on a tour through the strange biology of the mosquito and the even stranger history of its relationship with humans over the ages. Frighteningly, few of the attempts we have made to control malaria have ever been truly successful, and vast sums of money have been wasted on a panoply of drugs and technologies. Even the current favoured solution, providing treated bednets to Third World countries, is of limited use.

You'll never feel the same about squashing a mosquito again.

'A thrilling detective story spanning centuries, about our erratic pursuit of a villain still at large and still a threat to mankind' - Professor Malcolm Molyneux, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

'In her fascinating book, Shah outlines how a small but devious enemy has exploited human expansion and shaped our genetics along the way... If we want to beat malaria once and for all there's not a moment to lose.' - Professor Geoff McFadden, ARC Federation Fellow, University of Melbourne

Sonia Shah is a science journalist and author of the critically acclaimed Crude: The story of oil. A former writing fellow of The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation, her writing has appeared in The Lancet, The Nation, New Scientist and elsewhere.