Animal Stories
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- 予約注文
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- リリース予定日：2026年4月9日
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- ¥1,500
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- 予約注文
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
A curious exploration of mortality, alienation, boredom, surveillance and how we regard ourselves among the animals.
‘Few human animals have Zambreno’s baleful honesty, insight, or relish for comedy, when they look at themselves’ Daisy Hildyard, author of Hunters in the Snow and Emergency
Animal Stories begins with Kate Zambreno’s visit to the monkey house at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where one stark tree ‘seems to be the stage design for a simian production of Waiting for Godot’. But who are the players and who is the audience, and can they recognise each other?
What follows is a series of reports from the deep strangeness of the zoo, a space that is ‘more often than not deeply sad, an odd choice for regular pilgrimages of fun’. Amid these excursions with their young children, Zambreno turns to Garry Winogrand’s photographs and John Berger’s writings on animals, reshaping the spectator as the subject to decipher our complex ‘zoo feelings’ – what we project, and what we refuse to see. In ‘My Kafka System’, which dovetails with these zoo studies, Zambreno thinks through the notebooks and animal stories of a writer known for playing at the threshold between species, continuing their investigation into the false divide between human and animal.
In writing that is inquisitive and inventive, Zambreno renders visible the enclosures we construct and those we occupy ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Essayist and novelist Zambreno (The Light Room) uses zoos as a landscape to explore the human psyche in this provocative collection. The essays are divided into two sections; in the first, "Zoo Studies," Zambreno draws poignant parallels between humans and animals, prompting the question: if people and animals are not so different, then how can humans justify their captivity? In one scene, Zambreno recalls seeing an orangutan in the zoo holding her baby—trapped, tired, and gazed upon—and the overwhelming sympathy they felt as a fellow parent. In addition to their own experience, Zambreno explores representations of zoos in various mediums, such as the photographs of Garry Winogrand and the writings of John Berger, exposing the sadness and strangeness of these spaces ("The zoo is a place we go, and can only tolerate if we don't really look at it"). These themes culminate in the collection's second half, "My Kafka System," which examines the life and writing of Franz Kafka, highlighting how such works as the 1915 novella The Metamorphosis serve as an allegory for the dehumanizing and imprisoning nature of work structures and societal expectations. Throughout, the author deftly draws from anthropology, philosophy, and psychology to offer a striking meditation on captivity. Zambreno's lucid writing and relentless inquisitiveness shine.
