Zoo City: hard-boiled South African urban fantasy makes murder out of magic

South African writer Lauren Beukes's second novel Zoo City, is a remarkable, gritty, noir urban fantasy set in a Johannesburg where criminals and sinners are marked out by animal familiars that mysteriously appear after the commission of a great evil and attach themselves for life. When your animal dies, you are taken by The Undertow, a malevolent black hole in space that arrives within moments of your animal's death and reduces you to ash. But being animalled isn't all bad: the animalled get magical powers, randomly assigned by whatever fate grants you your familiar.

The protagonist of Zoo City is Zinzi December, former journalist, former junkie, former fratracide, now living in Zoo City, a squatter slum filled with the animalled. Zinzi's magic power is the ability to locate lost objects, and her dark secret is that she pays back the crime syndicate that bought out her dope-debt by running 419 scams. This is more awful, even, than the fact that she accidentally got her brother killed, and she doesn't share the secret with anyone -- not even with her horribly burned refugee boyfriend.

Zoo City follows a fairly traditional (not to say predictable) noir plot: Zinzi takes a minor job finding a lost ring for a rich lady, but the lady is murdered as she is on her way to return the job and get paid, throwing suspicion on her. A mysterious animalled pair on the site offers her a job finding a missing person -- a rising young pop-star who's vanished after a fight with her producer -- and Zinzi takes it against her better judgment. She needs the money to pay off the crime syndicate, who are pushing her deeper into the 419 scams.

But Zinzi's new job is anything but straightforward, and the story twists and turns as the true nature of the millionaire power-broker producer comes to light, and we learn about the dark side of magic, the animalled, and murder. The story writhes back and forth like the best noirs, Chandleresque, but filled with unknowable magic and set in an ultra-gritty Jo-burg that makes District 9 look like a holiday camp.

Zoo City is a fabulous outing from an extremely promising writer. Beukes's first novel, Moxyland, was a dystopian cyberpunk thriller that never quite jelled for me, despite moments of real brilliance. But I had no such reservations about Zoo City, which has so much fabulous wordplay, imaginative settings and scenarios, and such a dark and cynical heart that I was totally riveted by it.

Zoo City

• [WombatSam]

  Moxyland and Zoo City are both available from the publisher’s website http://angryrobotstore.com as cheap, DRM-free e-books with no geo-locking.

  As much as I loved Moxyland, Zoo City is the real deal.

• [Anonymous]

  One of SA’s finest! With a great cover to boot!

• [Znaps]

  Since my post appeared after the covers information, I’d like to make a second post about the covers.

  I’m somewhat conflicted;
  On the one hand, I find the white cover sublime. Absolutely wonderful.
  On the other, rather than the explicit content of the colour cover, the fact that it shows black people, black faces on the cover, in a book which is not centrally consciously black*, is great.

  *which is to say this is a story where race is not raised as a key issue, or which revolves around race.

• [Marco @ Angry Robot]

  Thought I should clarify where to find the book, cos ZOO CITY exists in a few different editions around the globe.

  ZOO CITY was first published July 2010 in Lauren’s native South Africa by the lovely folks at Jacana. (White cover edition)

  UK edition – White cover, published September 2010 by Angry Robot (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com)

  US edition – John Picacio colour cover edition will be published December 26th by Angry Robot/Random House (Amazon.com)

  EBooks and Kindle editions available in all the usual places right now.

• [VoxExMachina]

  This makes me happy. I read Moxyland and it’s great to see that the author has continued to improve her craft.

• [Doran]

  Lauren Beukes is a favorite of mine. I loved both Moxyland and Zoo City. She’s created a weird parallel society where armor-wearing penguins are just another fact of life. Fun, fun read.

• [blkhawk]

  This title is not available for customers from your location in: Europe

• [Znaps]

  I’m a massive fan. Loved Moxyland, picked up Zoo City and loved it almost as much.

  Took me a little time to get with the momentum of the book, but a great read.

• [jenjen]

  The Kindle edition has the black cover, and it’s currently (as of Friday Nov 5) only $3.99. Which I suppose I should feel guilty about.