Five Past Midnight in Bhopal [Paperback]

Dominique Lapierre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2003

A beautifully written human account of the infamous Bhopal chemical accident, from the bestselling author of CITY OF JOY. It was hailed as a miracle. A cheap, effective solution to India's food shortages, the American pesticide, Sevin, promised the world. And Union Carbide's state-of-the-art factory would provide jobs for the thousands of refugees who came from far and wide to the vibrant, teeming city of Bhopal, dreaming of a better life. But at five past midnight on the night of 3 December 1984, a terrible explosion poured noxious fumes into Bhopal's crowded slums. The apocalypse had begun. With pace and compassion, Lapierre and Moro bring this disaster and its victims to centre stage: the young Padmini who is to be married that night; the advent of Union Carbide and its mission to rescue the Third World; a Scottish nun who risks her life to save lost children; and a poetry lover who unleashes the tragedy. They weave together these and many other stories to tell this epic of love and heroism, catastrophe and consequence. Vivid and compelling, FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL is an unforgettable tale of courage amid disaster.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the night of December 3, 1984, a cyanide cloud drifted over the streets of Bhopal, India, set loose by a leak in a nearby chemical plant. When the deadly fog lifted untold numbers of the city's residents--perhaps as many as 30,000, by some accounts--lay dead, while half a million others were injured. Dominique Lapierre, a French journalist and longtime champion of India's poor, joins with Spanish writer Javier Moro to recount the terrors of that night, about which the whole truth may never be known. The deaths are but one part of the authors' long, sometimes elaborate tale, which relates how the industrial conglomerate Union Carbide had come to build its vast chemical complex at Bhopal, one meant to be a glory of technology and, ironically, to save thousands of lives brought low by insect-wrought starvation. There are few villains but many heroes in the authors' account, which explores the margins at which good intentions conflict with the profit motive, at which cost-cutting omissions yield horrifically unintended consequences. It all makes for a thoughtful and disturbing book. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

As with Lapierre's City of Hope, this latest project, co-written with Spanish travel writer and journalist Moro (The Jaipur Foot), is part historical documentation and part dramatization, a modern fable depicting the communities that weathered the effects of early globalization in India. After DDT was banned in 1973, American chemical giant Union Carbide began to push Sevin, a pesticide that calls for highly toxic and unstable ingredients in its production. They built a processing plant in Bhopal, India, where a combination of poor supervision and penny-pinching tactics eventually led to the world's worst industrial disaster: on December 3, 1984, the plant sprung a leak during routine maintenance procedures. The resulting noxious vapors killed between 16,000 and 30,000 and left 500,000 permanently injured. As Lapierre and Moro recount the disaster, they weave in the story of a family of peasants forced to leave their farmland and move to the Bhopal region, where their fate intersected tragically with that of the plant. The moral of the story is familiar (what's good for Union Carbide is not so good for the world), but it still packs a bitterly ironic punch. With their canned dialogue and patronizing tone, the close-ups of Indian life are not as effective as the authors' straightforward history of the accident. Nevertheless, the inherent drama of the story keeps the pages turning, and its lessons make the book well worth picking up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743220358
• ISBN-13: 978-0743220354
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,089,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grisly Nonfiction Novel, August 22, 2002

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster (Hardcover)

"Five Past Midnight in Bhopal" documents the story of the famous disaster at the Union Carbide plant in India that killed between 16,000 and 30,000 people. The reason the death toll is so variable is because most of the victims were among the very poorest in a country that has a staggering numbers of such people. Whole familes were killed, leaving nobody behind to report their deaths. Authors Dominic Lapierre and Javier Moro recount the disaster by using the technique of the non-fiction novel rather than reporting the events in a straight narrative. There are no notes and no bibliography, just a 400 page narrative of the story from the inception of the plans to build the Union Carbide plant to the aftermath of the tragedy.

The authors build the story through interviews with the workers at the plant, survivors from the city and several Union Carbide employees. The tale that emerges is one of an unfortunately preventable disaster that occurred because of misguided corporate decisions, the faultiest of which was probably the decision to build and run such a technologically complex and potentially dangerous facility in a third world country in the first place. Union Carbide also suffered from a misreading of the Indian marketplace and ultimately from a horribly misguided cost cutting plan that decimated safety proceedures at the plant and directly led to the disaster.

Lapierre and Moro are excellent writers whose prose is compellingly readable, though a bit overly dramatic at times. The style of the book is likely to put off some readers, who may be expecting more straightforward reporting. I should also note that the book concludes with an appeal for donations to help the poverty stricken in India, further illustrating that it is not a work of journalism. Nevertheless, this is an important story that deserves to retold as a cautionary note to both big business and to governments.

Overall, a gruesome story of man made disaster that most readers will likely find both moving and enraging.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So We Never Forget, March 3, 2003

By 

"mobby_uk" (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster (Hardcover)

Rarely I start a book and can not put it down until the very last page. Being a avid reader of various topics for many years, Five Past Midnight at Bhopal was one such book, that made me stay till two in the morning, unable to put it down.
I faintly remember the incident at Bhopal, having been fairly young at the time to take in all the details, or appreciate the human tragedy that has occured, so I did not hesitate to buy this book as soon as it was published, being previously unfamilair with the works of Lapierre and Moro.
What makes this book so powerful is its unflinching humanity. Some of the thousands of victims that died that night, suddenly were alive with a history, and the authors with obvious sympathy, transform wretched, destitute, outcast people into heroes..their lives, joys, aspirations, optimism in the face of impossible odds is a wonderful triumph of the human spirit, regardless of how many gods it worships.
The moment when one of these people gets the first TV set, to the amazement of all the slum dwellers, is very touching and powerful..When the wedding preparations are made, and the joy of the parents borrowing money from a usurer to make it the most beautiful day of their daughter's life, is full of dignity..In short, the authors succeed on one level, to pay hommage to people that are forgotten in their own country and certainly in the world.
Yet the whole book is about the tragedy of the factory, and although I believe that the incident was partly caused by the cost cutting of Union Carbide,partly because of the inefficiency, and lack of training of the employees..(I did not join the authors in their apparent anti globalization undertones), the effect and devastation was mind boggling.
Yet why this book works beautifully, is simply because the authors have presented us with the lives of many characters, and when the tragedy strikes, we care enough about these people to turn every page in anticipation to know their fate.
It also reads like a thriller, escalating tension up until the fateful moment..
I did not finish the book accusing anyone, it is a tragic accident, rather I had a great feeling about how great the human spirit can be, the notion of selfless sacrifice coming alive.
If anything, I think the proceeds of this book will help some of the victims, which will make it an essential buy.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why did it happen: GREED!, December 17, 2004

By 

Vijay K. Gurbani (Lisle, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster (Hardcover)

Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster, Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro - The gas leak in Bhopal in the winter of 1984 claimed 3,787 lives. That's the official count; unofficial estimates range from 20,000 dead and half a million suffering from the after-effects of inhaling a noxious gas. Why did the tragedy happen? Simple: greed. Union Carbide, in a zeal to supply more pesticide than could be used in the subcontinent, built a plant to produce the pesticide locally. When the Indian droughts and distribution problems conspired to reduce their revenues, UC did what any western corporation does with pride: reduce costs. In this case, costs were reduced by allowing the safety systems of the plant to atrophy. The air-conditioner which should have maintained a regulating temprature was shut down; the flare which would normally have burned off the excess gas was extinguished; the pipes which would have shunted the execss gas to other tanks were left to rust; the employees who should be monitoring the saftey functions of the plant were let go. After all, UC thought, a plant that was not producing any pesticide could not turn into an environment disaster. They were wrong.
Due to a series of unfortunate occurences, gas pressure built up in the tanks causing it to escape, with deadly results. Since UC had not seen fit to provide information on the composition of the gas (Methyl isocynate, or MIC) to the local government, no effective antidote could be used by the hospitals when affected people started to arrive. By the morning of December 3, 1984, thousands were dead.
The name Bhopal is synonymous with the disaster that occurred there 20 years ago. To this date, no criminal proceedings have been held to hold UC responsible (UC was bought out by Dow Chemicals in 2000, and no longer exists as an independent company; Dow absolves all responsibility of the disaster). UC settled with the Indian government on a sum of US $470 million. After 20 years, about US $300 million are still with the Indian government awaiting disbursements to people who are no longer alive, or even if they are alive, are dying a slow and painful death. The Indian government, maybe out of inertia, or maybe out of the mistaken belief that future multi-nationals may not invest in India if UC is charged with criminal neglect, has not done anything to prosecute UC. UC, for its part, blames the accident on a disgruntled employee! The CEO of UC, Warren Anderson, lives in anonymity in the US; he is a wanted person in India. Thousands of lives have been lost and millions affected, all brushed aside by a UC statement that distills these enormous losses to a "per share loss of 0.43 cents!"
This is a great book, written in the same style that Dominique Lapierre uses for "Freedom At Midnight". 2/3 of the book is devoted to glimpses in the lives of the people who were the hardest hit by the gas leak; the remaining 1/3 is devoted to the actual leak. This book should be a must read for all multi-nationals that espouse to exploit the cheap third world labor market. It is a telling fact that when smaller amounts of gas leaks in UC plants occurred in the US, one of the affected women went to college to get a degree in environment issues and armed with it, battled UC in the courts (and prevailed). The affected people in Bhopal did not have such a chance, nor can they even comprehend this as a way of battling corporations. India has a long way to go before it considers itself a first world country. For more information, see Union Carbide's official site on the Bhopal Disaster (http://www.bhopal.com), and a non- government organization site (http://www.bhopal.org), which to me is far more believable than UC's site.