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The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
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The Zookeeper’s Wife

A War Story

$20.99

Retail price: $29.95

Discount: 29%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Suzanne Toren
Length 10 hours 55 minutes
Language English
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The New York Times bestseller now a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain.A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history.

Drawing on Antonina’s diary and other historical sources, bestselling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina’s life as “the zookeeper’s wife,” responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their “guests”: resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinski’s young son risked his life carrying food to the guests, while also tending to an eccentric array of creatures in the house: pigs, hare, muskrat, foxes, and more. With hidden people having animal names and pet animals having human names, it’s a small wonder the zoo’s code name became “The House under a Crazy Star.” Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.

Diane Ackerman is the author of many highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including A Natural History of the Senses, a book beloved by millions of readers all over the world, and The Zookeeper’s Wife, a New York Times bestseller which received the Orion Book Award. She has taught at Columbia and Cornell and has been published in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Parade, the New Yorker, and National Geographic.

Suzanne Toren has over 30 years of experience in recording.  She won the American Foundation for the Blind's Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year in 1988, and AudioFile magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture.  She is also the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. Her many credits include works by Jane Smiley, Margaret Weis, Jerry Spinelli, Barbara Kingsolver, and Cynthia Rylant. AudioFile also raves, “Toren brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries.” Toren also performs on and off-Broadway and in regional theatres.

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Reviews

“Suzanne Toren’s respectful reading allows the horror of the Holocaust to emanate from the compelling story…Toren skillfully portrays the fear and revulsion expressed by Antonina in her diary and creates convincing accents for the many Polish characters.”

“Suzanne Toren deftly reads this account of Jan and Antonina Zabinski…This audio version, brilliantly set and realized and deeply compelling, offers a significant example of courage under fire. The book has also been made into a film.”

“Ackerman…makes beautiful work of harrowing tales of [her characters’] determination to keep souls alive, in the actual and metaphorical sense both.”

“A true story—of human empathy and its opposite—that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful.”

“Fresh and compelling…Ackerman has succeeded in a vivid, cinematically written book that’s bound to find its way to the screen.”

“An inspiring read…may join Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda as popular accounts of heroism in the face of genocide.”

“This suspenseful, beautifully crafted story deserves a wide readership.”

“An exemplary work of scholarship…Ackerman’s affecting telling of the heroic Zabinskis’ dramatic story illuminates the profound connection between humankind and nature and celebrates life’s beauty, mystery, and tenacity.”

“Ackerman has done an invaluable service in bringing a little-known story of heroism and compassion to light. Highly recommended.”

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Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch