The Old Men at the Zoo
Angus Wilson
Rated: 3.25 of 5 stars
3.25
· 4 ratings · 346 pages · Published: 1961
Set in a near future (the novel was first published in 1961 and is set in the period 1970-73), this is Angus Wilson's most allegorical novel, about a doomed attempt to set up a reserve for wild animals.
Simon Carter, secretary of the London Zoo, has accepted responsibility and power to the prejudice of his gifts as a naturalist. But power is more than just the complicated game played by the old men at the zoo in the satirical first half of this novel: it lies very near to violence, and in the second half real life inexorably turns to fantasy - the fantasy of war.
This tense and at times brutal story offers the healing relationship between man and the natural world as a solution for the power dilemma.
Tagged as:
- sc-fi 4
- 20th century 3
- dystopia 3
- classics 2
- literary fiction 2
- satire 2
- funny 2
- historical 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- book 1
- adult fiction 1