City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Animalia, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo ; translated from the French by Frank Wynne

eng

no index present

fiction

Animalia

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo ; translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Animalia is a powerful novel about man's desire to conquer the natural world and an unflinching, visceral and important exploration of human nature an intergenerational story set in the west of France, mirroring the life and life cycle of humans and pigs. Animalia retraces the history of a modest peasant family through the twentieth century as they develop their small plot of land into an intensive pig farm. In an environment dominated by the omnipresence of animals, five generations endure the cataclysm of war, economic disasters, and the emergence of a brutal industrialism reflecting an ancestral tendency to violence. Only the enchanted realm of childhood that of Eleonore, the matriarch, and that of Jerome, the last in the lineage and the innate freedom of the animals offer any respite from the visible barbarity of humanity