The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

Overview

A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
"An inspiring read that may join Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda as popular accounts of heroism in the face of genocide."--Salt Lake Tribune

"Fresh and compelling. ... Ackerman has succeeded in a vivid, cinematically written book that's bound to find its way to the screen."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A lovely story about the Holocaust might seem like a grotesque oxymoron. But ... Diane Ackerman proves otherwise. Here is a true story--of human empathy and its opposite--that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful."--Washington Post Book World

"Absolutely compelling. ... Ackerman, who researches intensely, makes beautiful work of harrowing tales of [her characters'] determination to keep souls alive, in the actual and metaphorical sense both."--New York Daily News

"[Ackerman] luxuriates in sensory exploration and metaphor. ... It's a tribute to her talent that the book feels both triumphant and inevitable by the last page."--Orion.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds. Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. She introduces us to such varied figures as Lutz Heck, the duplicitous head of the Berlin zoo; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto; and the leaders of Zegota, the Polish organization that rescued Jews. Ackerman reveals other rescuers, like Dr. Mada Walter, who helped many Jews pass, giving lessons on how to appear Aryan and not attract notice. Ackerman's writing is viscerally evocative, as in her description of the effects of the German bombing of the zoo area: ...the sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed as they wrenched apart. This suspenseful beautifully crafted story deserves a wide readership. 8 pages of illus. (Sept.)
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Author Information

Bio of Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois. She received an M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her works of nonfiction include, most recently,The Zookeeper's Wife, narrative nonfiction about one of the most successful hideouts of World War II, a tale of people, animals, and subversive acts of compassion; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence; A Slender Thread, about her work as a crisisline counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the plight and fascination of endangered animals; A Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her memoir of flying; and the bestseller A Natural History of the Senses. Her poetry has been published in leading literary journals, and in the books Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire; I Praise My Destroyer; Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems; Lady Faustus; Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem; Wife of Light; The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral. She also writes nature books for children: Animal Sense; Monk Seal Hideaway; and Bats: Shadows in the Night. Ms. Ackerman has received many prizes and awards, including a D. Litt. from Kenyon College, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orion Book Award, John Burroughs Nature Award, and the Lavan Poetry Prize, as well as being honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. She also has the rare distinction of having a molecule named after her --dianeackerone. She has taught at a variety of universities, including Columbia, the University of Richmond, and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian, Parade, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other journals, where they have been the subject of much praise. She hosted a five-hour PBS television series inspired by A Natural History of the Senses.

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Additional Info

Imprint

W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated

Filesize

986.61 KB

Number of Pages

368

eBook ISBN

9780393069341