Zoo City / Lauren Beukes

“Down these mean streets a woman with a magic animal must go.
You’ll want to go there too. Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon
crossed with Raymond Chandler. I loved it, it’s going to be huge.”
- Paul Cornell

“In Zoo City we have an unfamiliar land full of familiars, a broken Johannesburg
of the near future peopled with damaged wonders. Proving her debut novel was no fluke,
she writes better than I wish I could on my best day. If our words are bullets,
Lauren Beukes is a marksman in a world of drunken machine-gunners, firing her ideas
and images into us with a sly and deadly accuracy, wasting nothing, never missing.
I’ll follow her career as long as she’s willing to write and I’m able to read.”
- Bill Willingham, creator of Fables

Zoo City US / Canada cover

Zoo City UK Cover

Zinzi has a talent for finding lost things.

To save herself, she’s got to find the hardest thing of all: the truth.

An astonishing second novel from the author of the highly-acclaimed Moxyland.

FILE UNDER: Modern Fantasy [Black magic noir / Pale Crocodile / Spirit Guardians / Lost stars]

More praise
“An energetic and imaginative fusion of sci-fi, fantasy and noir thriller… Beukes has created a convincing and frequently disturbing world, while also looking at the lost and the marginalised through the eyes of a compelling, believably flawed protagonist… Zoo City is an absolute must for anyone with a taste for the wilder edges of the genre.
5 ***** – and an “SFX Recommends” badge.”
- SFX Magazine

“Zoo City is a story of mysteries unfolding, and it is a story well told. But it’s the world around the story, and the words that guide us through, that make it something more than simply marvellous.
With her subtle, intimate descriptions of the roads we walk in this crazy city; with characters so deeply twisty you could lose a giant squid in their nebulous hidey holes, and with turns of phrase that are as likely to conjure up Rudyard Kipling, Brenda Fassie or Credo Mutwa as they are to invoke Japanese anime, Doctor Who or the crack in Johnny Cash’s voice as he sings of his greatest loss, this canny authoress has brought real magic to everyday life in Jozi, in what I’m afraid I really am going to end off by describing as an act of unadulterated literature.”
- Matthew du Plessis, Times Live

“Beautifully written, Zoo City is by far a work of pure literary wonder. Beukes does not simply write a story, she crafts a world and brings it to life with words. As Zoo City sinks its animalistic teeth into readers, they will find themselves unable to put the book down. This novel shows a command of the English language that every author should strive for. It manages to be lyrical, witty, engaging and literary without alienating the audience.”
- Exclus1ves

“This is intelligent and witty urban writing for the 21st century: unashamedly South African yet thoroughly metropolitan; wildly entertaining, yet richly nuanced… Anyone who was worried about Beukes’s ability to live up to the wide acclaim and excitement raised by her debut novel Moxyland can rest assured. This is even better. Zoo City reaffirms Beukes as one of South Africa’s most imaginative new literary voices.”
- Andreas Späth, Women24

“While Zoo City still has an edge, it’s more lyrical than Moxyland. And it has magic… The protagonist can sense lost things. Sometimes she finds them. She is animalled, underclass. It’s been a long time since I’ve read an urban fantasy based on the-world-as-we-know-it-one-day-changed assumption. The novel is now, but it’s certainly not us. Beukes handles that assumption differently and shows how deep the effects of the changes are, right from the beginning. The fantasy elements are familiar. Justine Larbalestier’s How to Ditch Your Fairy carried through to its full dangerous potential; Pullman’s external souls in an adult world. Beukes handles them in her way and their familiarity doesn’t matter. All that matters is the remorseless pull of the story and the bitter wish for a happy ending. Beukes’ worlds aren’t hyper-real, or gentled: they hurt because they’re just one step removed from what we know”
- Gill Polack

“At times the witty and lyrical prose is sheer magic, the story captivating and the characters exotic, cruel and beautiful while the backdrop of Johannesburg seeths with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating.”
5*****
- SciFi and Fantasy Books

ZOO CITY

Lauren Beukes
Urban Fantasy
Cover: John Picacio

UK
2 September 2010
384pp B-format paperback
£7.99 UK $tbc Aus
ISBN 978 0 85766 054 1

US/Canada
January 2011
384pp mass-market paperback
$7.99 US $8.99 CAN
ISBN 978 0 85766 055 8

eBook
Sept 2010
price £3 sterling
ePub ISBN 978 0 85766 056 5