The Zookeeper's War by Steven Conte
It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo's director. Together, they struggle to look after the animals through the air raids and food shortages. When the zoo's staff is drafted into the army, forced labourers are sent in as replacements. At first, Vera finds the idea abhorrent, but gradually she realizes that the new workers are the zoo's only hope, and forms an unlikely bond with one of them. This is a city where a foreign accent is a constant source of suspicion, where busybodies report the names of neighbours' dinner guests to the Gestapo. As tensions mount in the closing days of the war, nothing and no one, it seems, can be trusted. "The Zookeeper's War" is a powerful novel of a marriage, and of a city collapsing. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism - and delivers an ending that is both shocking and deeply moving.
Beautifully textured and extremely well realised..a clever, inspired, insightful, tension-filled drama - Bookseller + Publisher This is an unlikely, charming and moving first novel - The Times.
Steven Conte was born in 1966 and raised in Guyra in rural New South Wales. He has travelled widely in Europe and Australia, lived in Sydney and Canberra, and is now living in Melbourne.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781847247278 |
| ISBN 10 | 184724727X |
| Title | The Zookeeper's War |
| Author | Steven Conte |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Quercus Publishing |
| Year published | 2008-11-06 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Prizes | Winner of Prime Minister's Literary Awards (Australia): Fiction 2008 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |