Giraffe Hardcover - 2006
by J. M. Ledgard
An astounding novel based on the true story of the life and mysterious death of the largest herd of giraffes ever held in captivity, in a Czechoslovakian town sleepwalking through communism in the early 1970s
In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world. This apparently senseless massacre lies at the heart of J. M. Ledgard's haunting first novel, which recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away behind the Iron Curtain. At once vivid and unearthly, Giraffe is an unforgettable story about strangeness, about creatures that are alien and silent, about captivity, and finally about Czechoslovakia, a middling totalitarian state and its population of sleepwalkers.
It is also a story that might never have been told. Ledgard, a foreign correspondent for the Economist since 1995, unearthed the long-buried truth behind the deaths of these giraffes while researching his book, spending years following leads throughout the Czech Republic. In prose reminiscent of Italo Calvino and W. G. Sebald, he imbues the story with both a gripping sense of specificity and a profound resonance, limning the ways the giraffes enter the lives of the people around them, the secrecy and fear that permeate 1970s Czechoslovakia, and the quiet ways in which ordinary people become complicit in the crimes committed in their midst.
Details
- Title Giraffe
- Author J. M. Ledgard
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition First American E
- Pages 298
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Penguin Press, New York
- Date August 17, 2006
- ISBN 9781594200991 / 1594200998
- Weight 1.05 lbs (0.48 kg)
- Dimensions 9.32 x 5.88 x 1.02 in (23.67 x 14.94 x 2.59 cm)
- Ages 18 to UP years
- Grade levels 13 - UP
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 2006043784
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
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