2008 book 42

Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife
Under the misapprehension that this was a novel, I was at first annoyed with Ackerman's penchant for cramming historical notes into her narrative. I didn't realize until chapter two that it was non-fiction! Heh. It's the story--compiled from memoirs, diaries, and testimonials--of the Warsaw zookeeper and his wife, who saved hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust and were otherwise active in the underground. At times hard to read--not just b/c of the Holocaust, but because family pets and zoo animals are often injured or killed--it's still, of course, a moving story. Ackerman does a good job of weaving their tale into the larger narrative of Warsaw in wartime. A.