Zoo City: The gripping and original WINNER of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke award

(Paperback)

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Description

A stunningly original urban fantasy of a shattered city where magic is horribly real Zinzi December has a talent for finding lost people. Even when they don't want to be found. And when she is hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find pop starlet Songweza, she hopes it will be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell's undertow. 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.

Reviews

[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 *

Author Bio

Lauren Beukes is the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City, Moxyland, Broken Monsters and Afterland, among other works. Her novels have been published in twenty-four countries and are being adapted for film and TV. She's also a screenwriter, comics writer, journalist and award-winning documentary maker. She lives in London.