Book Discussion Group, Saturday, December 2, 2017, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman 

Antonina Zabinski and Friends

The Author: Diane Ackerman

From The Encyclopedia Britannica: Diane Ackerman was born as Diane Fink in Waukegan, IL, in 1948. She attended Penn State and Cornell and taught at the University of Pittsburgh and at Washington University in St. Louis. She was a staff writer on The New Yorker from 1988 through 1994. Much of her poetry and prose has been influenced by the natural world. Among her full-length works are A Natural History of the Senses (1990), A Natural History of Love (1994), and An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain (2004).

In the video below, Diane Ackerman discusses The Zookeeper's Wife and it's themes:



The Real-Life Story 

Magdalena Gross and one of her sculptures

As you will know from reading the book, there really was a bombed-out Warsaw Zoo, a zookeeper, and his wife and child who served the Polish version of the Underground Railroad, smuggling Jews out of Warsaw during the German occupation. On a site named "History versus Hollywood," there is a page devoted to comparing the 2017 movie based on the book to the real-life participants. I was also able to find another page, "The House Under a Wacky Star," that goes into more depth (with pictures) about the history of the zoo, the Zabinski family, and some of the zoo's wartime guests.

For those of you interested in seeing the movie, here is an official trailer: