Giraffe
  • Published: 1 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099490531
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99

Giraffe

Formats & editions
EBook
30 Sep 2012
Paperback
1 May 2007
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One of the strangest, most beautiful novels you'll ever read, Giraffe bears comparison with the fiction of Sebald and Kundera

In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world.

Ledgard tells the story of the giraffes from the moment of their capture in Africa to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain. We see them first through the eyes of Emil, a haemodynamicist (he studies blood flow in vertical creatures) who is chosen to accompany them from Hamburg into Czechoslovakia. There Amina, a sleepwalker, a factory girl, glimpses their arrival and goes each day to gaze up at them. She is with them at the end, blinding them with a torch, as Jiri, a sharpshooter, brings them down one by one.

Giraffe is a story about strangeness, about creatures that are alien. It is also a story about captivity, about Czechoslovakia, a middling totalitarian state in the middle of Europe that is itself asleep, under a spell, a nation of sleepwalkers.
  • Published: 1 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099490531
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

J M Ledgard

J. M. Ledgard was born in 1968. He is a foreign correspondent for The Economist
in Africa.

Also by J M Ledgard

Submergence
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Praise for Giraffe

An outstanding debut, sparking with ideas and poetic qualities

Sam Phipps, Saturday Herald

A deeply eccentric novel, often beautifully written, with a haunting atmosphere

Kate Saunders, The Times

Giraffe is a work of obvious passion and great skill

Alex Gibbons, New Statesman

[P]oetic, multilayered prose...the strangeness of the giraffes' short-lived "migration'' to Czechoslovakia, Ledgard has found an effective symbol for what he calls "the brief communist moment''

Elena Seymenliyska, Daily Telegraph

There's plenty to like in Legard's novel: not least the wondrous, and gentle, giraffes

James Flint, Guardian

A weird and wonderful tale

Esquire

Giraffe is rich, difficult to describe...blade-sharp imagery...Giraffe is important as a work of art. It will probably change your life and if it does it will be for the better

Todd McEwan, Scottish Review of Books

The writing lies between poetry and prose... Beautifully written

Simon Baker, Literary Review