The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history. Drawing on Antonina's diary and other historical sources, bestselling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina's life as the zookeeper's wife, responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their guests resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto.Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinski's young son risked his life carrying food to the guests, while also tending to an eccentric array of creatures in the house (pigs, hare, muskrat, foxes, and more). With hidden people having animal names, and pet animals having human names, it's a small wonder the zoo's code name became The House under a Crazy Star. Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.
Diane Ackerman has been the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to many other awards and recognitions for her work, which include the best-selling The Zookeeper's Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780393061727 |
| ISBN 10 | 0393061728 |
| Title | The Zookeeper's Wife |
| Author | Diane Ackerman |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | WW Norton & Co |
| Year published | 2007-10-19 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Prizes | Winner of ALA Notable Books (Nonfiction) 2008 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |