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

Lauren Beukes is very, *very* good. It feels effortless. Utterly accomplished

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

Beukes’s energetic noir phantasmagoria … crackles with original ideas … Beukes skilfully employs all the twists of first-rate noir … powerful indeed

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

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

Original and unputdownable

An unpredictable and helluva awesome read

Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler. I loved it, it’s going to be huge

I couldn’t put this down. It’s weird, thrilling, funny… filled with sleazy characters and lots of bad attitude

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

Zoo City is pure originality … a book that had me reading it revelling in Beukes’ magical way with words

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