The Rome Zoo

Pascal Janovjak

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781760642754
• eBook ISBN: 9781743821855
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A love affair, a rare animal and a secret plot – The Rome Zoo is a powerful and darkly funny novel set in the lush gardens of the Villa Borghese. Rome, too, wants the sound of roaring as evening falls … The Rome Zoo: a place borne of fantasy and driven by a nation's aspirations. It has witnessed – and reflected in its tarnished mirror – the great follies of the twentieth century. Now, in an ongoing battle that has seen it survive world wars and epidemics, the zoo must once again reinvent itself, and assert its relevance in the Eternal City.Caught up in these machinations is a cast of characters worthy of this baroque backdrop: a man desperate to find meaning in his own life, a woman tasked with halting the zoo's decline and a rare animal, the last of its species, who bewitches the world.Drifting between past and present, The Rome Zoo weaves together these and many other stories, forming a colourful and evocative tapestry of life at this strange place. It is both a love story and a poignant juxtaposition of the human need to classify, to subdue, with the untameable nature of our dramas and anxieties.Spellbinding and disturbing, precise and dream-like, this award-winning novel is unlike any other.'Pascal Janovjak evokes a memory of this fantastical place with a concisely efficient pen, but it is also an ingenious and dark-humoured re-writing of the present.' —Lucie Tardin, Viceversa litérature ' The Rome Zoo is a work of striking originality … the book revisits the history of Italy from 1911 to the present day, interweaving a story of impossible love replete with its own astonishing twists and turns.' —Martine Freneuil, Le quotidien du médecin 'Pascal Janovjak has written a literary, philosophical, historical and romantic work of utter originality. A profound meditation on Italy's evolution as seen through the lens of the "lost paradise" of the Villa Borghese, an eccentric reflection of our own society.' —Marie-Lucile Kubacki, La Vie

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for The Rome Zoo
• Title Page
• Copyright
• The Rome Zoo
• Back Cover