A review by abrswf
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

4.0

This was an interesting but often difficult read. It is your basic detective story, but the setting is utterly unexpected, an alternate reality to our own in which criminality results in being "animaled," paired with an animal which seems to be the host's soul and later ego. The narrator is a badly flawed human being, and the basis for her animalled status is not one she ever fully discloses. The setting is Johannesburg, and one of the things that makes this book a tough read is all the local dialect, only some of which is ever translated. As usual with Beukes, there is plenty of violence, much of which is hard to endure as a reader. But the story is well written and I am still intrigued with its premise. So, only one star off for the fact that it is a surprisingly slow, hard read.