Reading Group on Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

This reading group is dedicated to Animalia by Jean Baptiste Del Amo, one of France’s most promising writers who won the Prix Goncourt for first novel and Times Book Literary Supplement of the Year 2019. Please note that the author won’t be present in person.

Animalia retraces the history of a modest peasant family through the twentieth century as they develop their small plot of land into an intensive pig farm. In an environment dominated by the omnipresence of animals, five generations endure the cataclysm of war, economic disasters, and the emergence of a brutal industrialism reflecting an ancestral tendency to violence. Only the enchanted realm of childhood – that of Éléonore, the matriarch, and that of Jérôme, the last in the lineage – and the innate freedom of the animals offer any respite from the visible barbarity of humanity.

Written in shifting prose that reflects the passage of time, Animalia is a powerful novel about man’s desire to conquer nature and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next.

You can find information on the book in English on the British publisher’s website.