Tre Publisher recently released the Vietnamese version of award-winning novel “Yersin -  Peste et choléra (Yersin- Plagues and cholera) by French contemporary author Patrick Deville.

The release is to commemorate the 2013 Vietnam France Year as well as Alexandre Yersin’s 70th death anniversary and 120th anniversary of Da Lat city, which was discovered by Yersin himself.

The novelized biography book, which won the 2012 Femina prize and entered the finals of other prestigious prizes including Goncourt, Renaudot and Médicis, successfully depicted the French doctor’s frugal lifestyle, his lifelong dedication to medicine and 50-year stay in Vietnam, his second hometown.

During his visit to Nha Trang, Deville was on the constant lookout for Yersin’s tracks as a source of inspiration for his book. In his book, Deville wrote beautiful, poetic prose on the stunning landscapes and warm people in Nha Trang and Dalat, which the venerated French doctor considered “paradise”. 

“The book is warmly embraced in France and worldwide as French people are now rediscovering their gifted fellowman doctor, who has seemed to fall into oblivion right in his hometown during all these years. Apart from being a literary success, the book is also a vividly realistic portrayal of Yersin and his generation of French intelligentsia, who cherished scientific and artistic aspirations and yearned to change the world with their minds and hearts amidst the then French government’s colonization ambitions,” said Dr. Doan Cam Thi, editor of the recently-released Vietnamese version, who is currently living in Paris.

Born in 1863 in Switzerland, Yersin was an eminent Swiss-French physician and bacteriologist. He is most remembered as the co-discoverer of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague or pest in 1894.

The doctor was credited in Vietnam with discovering Liang Biang Plateau, the site for Da Lat town, some 300 km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, in 1893.

He also founded the Nha Trang Pasteur institute in 1895 and participated actively in the establishment of the Medical School of Hanoi in 1902, and was its first director, until 1904.

Yersin lived and worked for 50 years (1890-1943) in Nha Trang City in central Khanh Hoa province, and died during World War II at his home in Nha Trang in 1943 and was buried in Suoi Dau, Khanh Hoa Province. He insisted on his deathbed that the place, not elsewhere, would be his final resting place.

His tomb has been recognized as a national relic and streets in HCMC and elsewhere also bear his name.

In September 2013, his 150th birthday anniversary, the doctor was posthumously conferred the Honorary Citizen title by the Vietnamese government.