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For a genre that’s frequently about exploring different and alien cultures, SF hasn’t always been brilliant at noticing the ones already here on Earth. Thankfully, throughout the years there have been authors pushing SF into more unusual and exotic territory – recently we’ve had Ian McDonald bringing to life near-future versions of India and Istambul, and now, following up the bleak and bizarre Moxyland , Lauren Beukes has served up another darkly provocative tale of South Africa.
It’s the story of Zinzi December, an ex-journalist turned junkie and internet scammer, who also has an uncanny ability to track down things people have lost. This is because Zinzi is a “Zoo” – after committing a crime, her guilt has ended up manifesting as a symbiotic animal (in Zinzi’s case, a sloth), meaning that she’s one of a whole underclass stuck in the “Zoo City” tenements of Johannesburg. But when Zinzi is hired to track down a missing singer, she finds herself taking a dangerous journey into the heart of the city, and discovering what it really means to be one of the “animalled”…
