Book Discussion Wednesday, November 12, 1:15 PM
The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
The afternoon book discussion group has announced its second book for the fall, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman. If you are looking for a new book to read this fall and are free on Wednesday afternoons, you are welcome to join the discussion. You do not have to be a member of the group to participate.
This book takes you to Poland's forest primeval, the Bialowieza, and paints a richly textured portrait of a natural world that few of us would recognize. The similarities end there, however, as Ackerman explores how that sense of natural order imploded under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Jan and Antonina Zabiniski--keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who sheltered Jews from the Warsaw ghetto--serve as Ackerman's lens to this moment in time, and she weaves their experiences and reflections so seamlessly into the story that it would be easy to read the book as Antonina's own miraculous memoir. Jan and Antonina's passion for life in all its diversity illustrates ever more powerfully just how narrow the Nazi worldview was, and what tragedy it wreaked. The Zookeeper’s Wife is a powerful testament to their courage. --brings this period of European history into intimate view. --Anne Bartholomew
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