Five Past Midnight In Bhopal / Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro

It was five past midnight on the night of 3 December 1984 when a terrifying cloud of toxic gas escaped from an American pesticide plant in the heart of the Indian city of Bhopal. Killing between sixteen and thirty thousand people and injuring five hundred thousand more, it was the most murderous industrial disaster in history. With compelling and vivid prose, Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro put faces to the masses that were killed or injured.

Hundreds of characters, situations and adventures are telescoped into this fresco full of love, heroism, faith and hope. Lapierre and Moro introduce individuals from both the slums and the teak-veneered offices of Union Carbide, conveying with disturbing clarity the despair and dignity behind the news headlines. An Indian peasant's family driven from their land by a swarm of ravaging aphids; Western engineers determined to rescue the Third World from its famines; a poetry-loving workman, who unleashes the apocalypse; heroic doctors who die giving victims mouth to mouth resuscitation and a young Indian bride who escapes the flames of a funeral-pyre because of a small cross round her neck.

This is a real tragedy of crucial relevance to our times, a warning to all those sorcerer's apprentices who threaten the future of our planet. And the people of Bhopal are still suffering. The authors of the book estimates that even now one hundred and fifty thousand people are chronically affected by the tragedy; breathing difficulties, recurrent fevers, chronic gynecological problems to name but a few. No court of law has ever passed judgement on Union Carbide for the crime committed in Bhopal and Warren Anderson, its then chairman, disappeared ten years ago to avoid being indicted for the crime. In Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, Dominique Lapierre continues his crusade for the forgotten poor of India.

Dominique Lapierre's has an incomparable gift for telling the human story, which first came to international acclaim in The City of Joy. He and Moro have triumphed again with this beautifully written, moving account of the night that forever changed the heart of India.