A review by pattricejones
A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism: Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven, by Slavenka Drakulić
5.0
Brilliant: Two books in one. I can't do it justice with a brief Goodreads review, so I'll write a real review and post the link when it's published.
I will say this: Scrolling through other reviews, I see multiple references to Animal Farm. I can't imagine why anyone might suggest that the books are similar except in the most superficial sense that they both critique communist states while deploying animals as protagonists. For the record, Animal Farm is a heavy-handed allegory in which the animal characters are simple stand-ins for people. This book is something else altogether: The stories of various former socialist states told, with one exception, by animals who are animals--not stand-ins for people. This allows Drakulic to write not only about relations among people under various communist regimes but also about human-animal relations and the ways that these two sets of relationships sometimes mirror each other. As I said: Two (or maybe three) books in one.
I will say this: Scrolling through other reviews, I see multiple references to Animal Farm. I can't imagine why anyone might suggest that the books are similar except in the most superficial sense that they both critique communist states while deploying animals as protagonists. For the record, Animal Farm is a heavy-handed allegory in which the animal characters are simple stand-ins for people. This book is something else altogether: The stories of various former socialist states told, with one exception, by animals who are animals--not stand-ins for people. This allows Drakulic to write not only about relations among people under various communist regimes but also about human-animal relations and the ways that these two sets of relationships sometimes mirror each other. As I said: Two (or maybe three) books in one.