Giraffe

Marking the debut of an unforgettable talent, this haunting novel rescues a tragedy from historical oblivion in a voice that engulfs the reader like a rapturous dream. In 1975 the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world was slaughtered in the zoo of a small Czechoslovakian town, a massacre that has never been explained. Exploring this mystery, Giraffe is a story, at once vivid and unearthly, of creatures that are alien and silent, of the inhabitants of a totalitarian state, sleepwalking through the "Communist moment," and of captivity and destruction of many kinds. Brilliantly transporting, Giraffe is a modern fable about the ways in which ordinary people become complicit in the crimes committed in their midst, as well as the power of living creatures to enchant us into wakefulness.