Race Against Time: Searching For Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa - Reception

Reception

In the Canadian market, Race Against Time debuted at #5 on The Globe and Mail's Nonfiction Bestseller List on October 29. It spent seven weeks at #1, and forty weeks in the top ten. Excerpts from the book were published in The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, and Alternatives Journal. At the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards in June 2006, the book won non-fiction book of the year and Lewis won the Author of the Year Award. The book was short-listed for the Pearson Writers' Trust Prize and the Trillium Book Award.

The book was positively received by reviewers. The prose has been called magnificent, lucid, eloquent, and passionate. Lewis' emotional appeal has been called remarkably candid, sincere, powerful, and moving. Connecting the diplomatic and policy level work of the UN and World Bank with specific effects on the ground in Africa, and describing the problem of orphans, were among the book strengths. Lewis' criticisms are constructive and, since they come from such an ardent multilateralist employed by the United Nations, authoritative. One reviewer questioned several of Lewis' potential solutions as contributing to the same system that consistently fails to address its flaws. The same reviewer identified as the book's weakness its political slant, which ignores corrupt or inefficient African governments and the realities of asking corporations and western governments to take steps against their self-interest, like canceling agricultural subsidies in the case of governments and donating profits in the case of businesses. Several reviewers noted that the book could be used as an effective tool to educate about the HIV/AIDS crisis and the plight of the people of sub-Saharan Africa.

An article in The New York Times, in October 2005, reported on the book's criticism of South Africa government, singling out President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Lewis claimed that the South African programs were half-hearted and confusing; a spokesperson for the Health Ministry characterized Lewis as a biased and uninformed judge of South Africa's situation, and countered that they are rapidly expanding treatment programs. In August 2006, as a keynote speaker at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Lewis sustained his criticism, calling South Africa government "still obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment".