The Zoo: Christopher Wilson - Hardcover

Wilson, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571334458 ISBN 13: 9780571334452

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2017

Synopsis

There are certain things that Yuri Zipit knows:

That being official food-taster for the leader of the Soviet Union requires him to drink too much vodka for a 12-year-old.
That you do not have to be an Elephantologist to see that the great leader is dying.
That Marshal Bruhah has been known to eat his own children, while Comrade Krushka is only fit to run a slaughterhouse, and that one of them has Yuri's father somewhere here in the Dacha.
That it's a crime to love your family more than you love Socialism, the Party or the Motherland.
That, because of his damaged mind, everyone thinks Yuri is a fool.

But Yuri isn't. He sits quietly through another excessive state dinner and witnesses it all - betrayals, body doubles, buffoonery. He's starting to get the hang of this politics thing, but there's so much to learn. Who knew that a man could be in five places at once? That someone could break your nose as a sign of friendship? That people could be disinvented?

The Zoo is a cutting satire, told through the refreshing voice of one gutsy boy who will not give up on hope.

About this title

Review

The Zoo is exquisite. A biting satire that broke my heart. Author: Nathan Filer

I absolutely loved it! So nimble and acute, by turns briskly hilarious and deeply humane. The Vonnegut comparisons are justified. Author: Stephen Kelman

Riveting. The energy and originality of Christopher Wilson's imagination is at its most striking in this fascinating novel. It's narrator and central character, is so engaging that it's impossible to put the book down. Author: Diana Athill

Original and fresh, cynical and innocent, amusing and horrific, cruel and humane, plausible and unbelievable... brilliantly written and resolutely unsentimental. It's funny and poignant and a wonderful book. Author: Nicholas Searle

Like Christopher, the narrator of Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Yuri is a savant, bewildered by the complexities of the adult world and simultaneously wise to them . What the fine balance between Yuri's cleverness and foolishness does achieve is a convincing insight into the psychology of a dictator's subjects. Source: Daily Telegraph

Christopher Wilson's biting Soviet satire, narrated with perfect pitch by a mordantly funny 12-year-old. Source: The Bookseller

It's a perverse quirk of history that dictatorships are good for literature: the world would be a poorer place without Kafka and others who have wrested extraordinary novels from the bleakest of political circumstances... Wilson mines great power from the contrast between Yuri's faux naif voice and the horror of what he is invariably describing... Shockingly funny. Author: Claire Allfree Source: The Daily Mail

A gift for creating compelling outsiders resonates throughout Christopher Wilson's novels . Engrossing and very moving. Source: Observer

Wilson mines great power from the contrast between Yuri's faux naif voice and the horror of what he is invariably describing . Shockingly funny. Source: Daily Mail

A timely and well-crafted satire about hope in an age of fabricated truth. Source: Literary Review

Book Description

Patrick deWitt meets Catch 22, when a guileless young boy gets mixed up in Stalin's inner circle.

'A wonderfully inventive and slyly constructed novel, horrifying, horribly funny, and disgracefully entertaining.' John Banville

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0571334458
• ISBN 13: 9780571334452
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240