Zoo City

Author Lauren Beukes
Narrator Qondiswa James
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Run Time 9 hours and 13 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Dystopian and utopian fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Science fiction: near-future, Science fiction: steampunk, Technothriller, Urban fantasy.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE 2011 ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD

Lauren Beukes' tale of a young woman trapped in a brutal city but looking for a way out . . .

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheque, she's forced to take on her least favourite kind of job - missing persons.

Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions reside.

Instead it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she'll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives - including her own.

'A major, major talent' George R. R. Martin

'Beukes is very *very* good. It feels effortless, utterly accomplished' William Gibson

'Beukes brings a secret tenderness and humanity to her off-kilter portrait of the here and now' Guardian

'Exquisitely paced and impeccably controlled. An enormously satisfying novel' New York Times Book Review

© Lauren Beukes 2018 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

[Beukes] brings a secret tenderness and humanity to her off-kilter portrait of the here and now
Guardian
Lauren Beukes is very, *very* good. It feels effortless. Utterly accomplished
William Gibson
A fabulous outing from an extremely promising writer … [It] has so much fabulous wordplay, imaginative settings and scenarios, and such a dark and cynical heart that I was totally riveted by it
Cory Doctorow
Beukes’s energetic noir phantasmagoria … crackles with original ideas … Beukes skilfully employs all the twists of first-rate noir … powerful indeed
Jeff Vandermeer, New York Times
Beukes delivers a thrill ride that gleefully merges narrative styles and tropes, almost single-handedly pulling the “urban fantasy” subgenre back towards its groundbreaking roots
Publishers Weekly
Energetic and imaginative … Packed with colour, dark humour and thought-provoking ideas, Zoo City is an absolute must for anyone with a taste for the wilder edges of the genre
SFX Magazine
Original and unputdownable
Cosmopolitan
An unpredictable and helluva awesome read
Heat
Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler. I loved it, it’s going to be huge
Paul Cornell
I couldn’t put this down. It’s weird, thrilling, funny… filled with sleazy characters and lots of bad attitude
Mike Nicol
An unfamiliar land full of familiars, a broken Johannesburg peopled with damaged wonders… If our words are bullets, Lauren Beukes is a marksman in a world of drunken machine-gunners
Bill Willingham
Zoo City is pure originality … a book that had me reading it revelling in Beukes’ magical way with words
SF Signal
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 seethes with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating
SciFi & Fantasy Books

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