The Constant Gardener

For the 2005 film of the same name, see The Constant Gardener (film).

The Constant Gardener is a 2001 novel by John le Carré. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing that there is more behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth behind her death, and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money.

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Plot summary

Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Nairobi, is told that his activist wife, Tessa, was raped and killed while traveling with a doctor friend in a desolate region of Africa. Investigating on his own, Quayle discovers that her rape and murder, reportedly done by her friend, may have had more sinister roots.

Justin learns that Tessa uncovered a corporate scandal. KVH (Karel Vita Hudson), a large pharmaceutical company working under the cover of AIDS tests and treatments, is testing a tuberculosis drug that has severe side effects. Rather than help the test trial subjects and begin again with new medicine, KVH covered up the side effects reported in the tests, and only improved the drug in anticipation of a massive, multi-resistant tuberculosis outbreak.

Justin travels the world, often under assumed identities, in order to reconstruct the circumstances leading to Tessa's murder. As he begins to piece together Tessa's final report on the fraudulent drug tests, he learns that the roots of the conspiracy stretch further than he could have imagined; to a German pharmawatch company, an African aid station, and most disturbingly to him, corrupt politicians in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

John le Carré writes in the book's afterword, "By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard." ^[1]

Film adaptation

The Constant Gardener was made into a major motion picture directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz in August of 2005 by Focus Films. The film grossed $33,565,375 in the U.S. box office and was rated R by the MPAA.^[2].