Our book club, which is open and free to all literature friends, will discuss the book 'Advanced Studies in Animals' by Eva Menasse. Books are available to buy from the library beforehand.
“Anyone who smiled at the world like that had to have a screw loose. Or one protective plate too few over his soul.“
For years, Eva Menasse gathered information from the animal world that, like reverse fables, seemed to her to reveal something about human behavior: caterpillars that dig their own graves, sharks that are given artificial respiration, ducks that keep a lookout for predators even when they’re asleep, sheep that shed their own wool. Each of these stories begins with a curious message from the animal world yet is dedicated entirely to the human species. An old despot who is extremely resistant to change can’t stop his wife’s dementia from erasing his past as well. A dedicated mother who protects a Muslim child against hostilities ultimately finds the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, blurring even for her. A woman realizes just how much her father’s fate has influenced her – both in her quirks and deepest fears. And a group of handpicked artists and scientists rehearses a grotesque revolution in the sweltering southern heat.
Like in her previous books, Menasse once again proves her storytelling talent and enthralls her readers with her sharp wit and melancholy earnestness.
Eva Menasse was born in 1970 in Vienna and began her career as a journalist. She now lives and works in Berlin as a publicist and writer. Her debut novel Vienna won the Corine Award for Best Debut and its English translation was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her short story collection Lässliche Todsünden (2009, “Venial Sins”) also achieved great success among critics and readers. She was awarded the Gerty Spies Prize, the Alpha Literature Prize, and the Heinrich Böll Prize of the city of Cologne for her novel Quasikristalle (2013, “Quasicrystals”). In 2015, her essay collection Lieber aufgeregt als abgeklärt was published, she was a fellow of the Villa Massimo in Rome and won the Jonathan Swift Award for satire and humor for her work to date.
Source: Kiepenheuer & Witsch
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