A love affair, a rare animal and a secret plot – The Rome Zoo is a powerful and darkly funny novel set in the lush gardens of the Villa Borghese.

Winner of the Swiss Literature Award, the Prix Michel-Dentan and the Prix du public de la RTS

Rome, too, wants the sound of roaring as evening falls . . .

The Rome Zoo- a place borne of fantasy and driven by a nation’s aspirations. It has witnessed – and reflected in its tarnished mirror – the great follies of the twentieth century. Now, in an ongoing battle that has seen it survive world wars and epidemics, the zoo must once again reinvent itself, and assert its relevance in the Eternal City.

Caught up in these machinations is a cast of characters worthy of this baroque backdrop- a man desperate to find meaning in his own life, a woman tasked with halting the zoo’s decline and a rare animal, the last of its species, who bewitches the world.

Drifting between past and present, The Rome Zoo weaves together these and many other stories, forming a colourful and evocative tapestry of life at this strange place. It is both a love story and a poignant juxtaposition of the human need to classify, to subdue, with the untameable nature of our dramas and anxieties.

Spellbinding and disturbing, precise and dream-like, this award-winning novel is unlike any other.

Pascal Janovjak (Author)
Born in Basel in 1975 to a French mother and a Slovakian father, Pascal Janovjak studied comparative literature and art history in Strasbourg before moving to the Middle East. His works include Coleopt res (Beetles), L’Invisible (The Invisible One) and Toi (To You), which he wrote with Kim Thuy.

Stephanie Smee (Translator)
Stephanie Smee left a career in law to work as a literary translator. Recent translations include Hannelore Cayre’s The Godmother and The Inheritors, Fran oise Frenkel’s rediscovered World War II memoir No Place to Lay One’s Head, which was awarded the JQ-Wingate Prize, and Joseph Ponthus’ prize-winning work On the Line.