Giraffe (novel)

"Giraffe" is a critically acclaimed debut novel by Scottish writer J. M. Ledgard.

"Giraffe" is based on a true Czechoslovakian story, which Ledgard discovered while working as a journalist in the Czech Republic for "The Economist" in 2001. In 1975, on the eve of May Day, Czechoslovakian secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off the zoo in the small Czech town of Dvůr Králové nad Labem and orchestrated the slaying of the zoo's entire population of forty-nine giraffes - the largest captive herd in the world. No reason for the action was ever given, and discussion of the incident was suppressed. It remains a state secret in the Czech Republic. Ledgard recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away in the Eastern Bloc. "Giraffe" was published in 2006 by Penguin Press in the United States, Jonathan Cape in Britain, and Héloïse d'Ormesson in France. Czech, Dutch, and English-language paperback editions appeared in 2007. While some reviewers found "Giraffe" stilted and sombre, the majority praised it as a masterpiece. The novel was named a 2006 Book of the Year by the Library Journal, and as a novel of the year by newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The "Library Journal" found "Giraffe" to be "a profoundly affecting novel that will wake you up and break your heart." The reviewer for the UK's"The Independent" described it as a "superb novel, filled with compassion, yet never sentimental." The "Chicago Tribune" critic likened "Giraffe" to T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", while the review in the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" thought Ledgard's prose closer to that of Italo Calvino. Other reviews drew comparison with the German writer, W. G. Sebald. The "Cleveland Plain Dealer" reviewer argued that "Giraffe" is "a potent, disturbing dream, as if Radiohead's 'Idioteque' had mixed with something by Haruki Murakami." The "New York Times" critic was "continually reminded of Harold Bloom's remark about all great books being strange."

According to one of the novel's publishers, Penguin Press, "Giraffe" marks the debut of an unforgettable talent.... At once vivid and unearthly, "Giraffe" is a meditation on suffering, on the strangeness of vertical creatures, and on the inhabitants of a middling totalitarian state, sleepwalking through the ‘communist moment’."

The novel's author, J. M. Ledgard, was born on the Shetland Islands, in 1968, and educated in England, Scotland, and America. He has been a foreign political and war correspondent with "The Economist" since 1995 and is an occasional contributor to the "The Atlantic Monthly".

Sources

* [http://booksellers.dk.com/static/pdf/penguin-summer07.pdf Penguin Books Summer 2007 catalog] , accessed 4 February 2007
* [http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1155976659263150.xml?eblon&coll=2 Review] by Karen Long in the "Cleveland Plain Dealer"
* [http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article360500.ece Review] by Nicholas Royle in "The Independent"
* [http://www.radio.cz/en/article/78500 The tragic story of the disappearing giraffes] by David Vaughan at Radio Prague
* [http://modernmask.org/literature/The_Beauty_in_the_Beast.html Review] in Modern Mask

* [http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/giraffe.html] , Penguin Reading Guide