Animals
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A riveting dystopian novel that examines how humans mistreat animals, and each other: “A powerful piece of writing, and a disturbing call to conscience” (J.M. Coetzee).
It is more than 100 years in the future and the horrors of factory farming, combined with the widespread abuse of antibiotics, have led to mass extinctions. The majority of all mammals, birds, and fish that humans have eaten for millennia no longer exist. Those not fully capable are deemed undeserving of an equal share of scarce medical resources and are ultimately classified as less than human. As paranoia about our food supplies spreads, a forceful new logic takes hold; in the blink of a millennial eye the disenfranchised have become our food. Don LePan’s “well-plotted” and “formally audacious” novel shows us a world at once eerily foreign and disturbingly familiar (Booklist).
It follows the dramatic events that unfold within a family after they take in an abandoned mongrel boy. In the sharp-edged poignancy of the ethical questions it poses, in the striking narrative techniques it employs, and above all, in the remarkable power of the story it tells, Animals proves itself a transformative work of fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the center of this dystopian novel lies a philosophical premise: that the line between human and animal is too unclear to justify inhumane treatment of the latter whether pet or farm animal. In a twenty-second century America, a combination of mass extinction and economic hardship has led people to look for an alternate source of meat: disabled human beings, stripped of their humanity, who are either kept as pets or farmed, with cruel efficiency, as food. Sam is one such person, a deaf child abandoned by his mother and adopted as a pet. The "found manuscript" that tells his story, and the accompanying scholarly commentary, paint a convincing picture of moral decline and ethical inconsistency on a devastating scale. Though at times heavy-handed, Animals nonetheless has the moral clarity and narrative drive of the best of the genre. LePan's vision is extreme, and though he focuses more on the evils of factory farming than on vegan evangelism, some may find it off-putting. But even those who might disagree with his thesis will be compelled by the implications of this well-plotted and formally audacious tale. (Jun.)
