Out on Monday 23rd as an eBook – from Weidenfeld&Nicholson UK – my latest translation from the Italian: Paolo Giordano’s How Contagion Works.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time.
Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world: why it matters,how it impacts us,how we must react.

By expanding his focus to include other forms of contagion – from the environmental crisis to fake news and xenophobia – Giordano shows us not just how we got here but also how we can work together to move forward.


Paolo Giordano is a physicist and the author of four bestselling novels. His article ‘The Mathematics of Contagion’ – published in Italy at the beginning of the Covid-19 emergency – was shared more than 4 million times and helped shift public opinion in the early stages of the epidemic. The author is donating his royalties to medical research charities and to those who are working to cure those infected.


Translated from the Italian by Alex Valente