I wrote a short review of Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City for Saturday’s Indian Express. It’s a fantastic book, and one that’s quite likely to be seen as a classic in the near future. I’d like to see more set in this universe (not a sequel – I think Zinzi’s story ends at the right place) because there’s a lot in it to play with. My IE piece focused on the genre elements of the book but there’s quite as much to be said about the familiars, the ways in which the familiars are discussed (the reason I can read the book as science fiction) and the way Beukes weaves other forms of writing into the text.
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Lauren Beukes is a South African journalist and writer. Her first book, 2008’s dystopia, Moxyland, was well-received. Zoo City, her second novel, is a fantasy crime thriller set in the city of Johannesburg.
Zinzi December is a former journalist. After the death of her brother (for which she is in some way responsible) and a spell in prison she moves into Zoo City, a ghetto in Johannesburg inhabited by other former criminals. Here she begins a new life and ekes out a living writing emails for 419 scams and helping people to find missing objects, which are all too frequently in the city’s sewers. The one thing she refuses to do? Find missing persons. Then a client dies and Zinzi is unfortunately on the spot. She’s persuaded by a pair of thoroughly unpleasant characters to take on the case of a missing teenage popstar, and from there on it all goes to hell. Thus far we have a reasonably typical (and rather good) noir crime novel.
As an outsider, it’s tempting to read almost everything that comes out of South Africa as being in some way about apartheid. In the case of 2008’s District 9, this was certainly justified, though it did somewhat draw attention away from the sfnal aspects of the film. In Zoo City the parallels are less obvious, but they are very present. A number of places in the city have a “policy” against allowing the animalled in. Zinzi and those like her are subject to greater scrutiny by the law and are restricted to living in the only area in the city that will have them.
Then there are the animals. Fans of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series will be familiar with “daemons”, animals that exist as a sort of external manifestation of the human soul. Beukes namechecks Pullman within the text with a web page that references “Steering by the Golden Compass: Pullman’s fantasy in the context of the ontological shift (2005)”. Beukes’ familiars are different from Pullman’s daemons, particularly because they exist only for a marginalised few. But this makes the relationship between human and animal far more interesting – simultaneously resentful and (reluctantly) affectionate.
If Zoo City has a particular flaw it’s that its characters are not very likeable. Perhaps this is for the best, considering the number of awful things that seem to happen to them. Despite this Beukes’ book is intelligent, gripping and relentless, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.
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