The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Movie Tie-in Editions, #0)

by Diane Ackerman

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw-and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants-otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

• ISBN10: 0393061728
• ISBN13: 9780393061727
• Publish Date: 19 October 2007 (first published 1 January 2007)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: WW Norton & Co
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber]

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up The Zookeeper’s Wife, but it certainly wasn’t this. I knew from reading a couple of reviews that this was a non-fiction account, but I wasn’t expecting the author to add so many fictionalised scenes and moments. It made for a very strange mixture.


I think if the book had been purely biographical, I would have enjoyed it more. Instead the author added extra scenes and bits and pieces with the characters that drew me out of the book. It felt like the author couldn’t decide whether to keep this book entirely non-fiction or not. Maybe she wanted to add some excitement.

I’m going to watch the movie, because I feel like this story would be better told on screen. It can’t get much worse than the book, anyway!

[readingwithwrin]

3.5 star

It’s amazing how this couple operated a safe place for 300 people throughout wartime in Warsaw. I never would have thought of a zoo is a good place to hide anything, but now I do.
I have seen the movie as well and I did like the movie a little better. At times this book dragged and focused too much on the running of the zoo for my liking. I wanted more about the people they were saving.

[jamiereadthis]

The remarkable, nearly first-hand account of the Warsaw Zoo in wartime; of all I've read of WWII, the fate of zoo animals as tied to the Nazi obsession with genetic purity would have never crossed my mind— not to mention the many human lives saved because of it. Well and thoroughly told, the only thing I could have wished for was more than a few paragraphs on the post-war reconstruction. And that's more a compliment than a complaint... so good was the story, I wanted to know much more.

[sstaley]

Being a history buff, I thought that I would like this book more than I did. It is an account of a real life couple that survived living in Warsaw, Poland during WWII. They ran the zoo in Warsaw before the war started. I found the Zabinskis, Polish Christians, very interesting and courageous people. They secretly harbored many Polish Jews that might have otherwise been carted off to the death camps.

The author, Diane Ackerman, is a good writer, but I felt like she kept steering off track. I read this book mainly to learn about the Zabinski's experiences, not neccesarily other aspects of WWII. When I want to read a book just about the war, I will choose one. I found myself wandering through the pages until the story came back to Jan and Antonina. I did enjoy when she described the many people that stayed with the Zabinskis and how they enriched each other's lives through the harsh realities of WWII.

Jan and Antonina were some of the unsung heroes that saved over 300 lives during the Nazi's cruel reign in Europe.