This is a weirdly fascinating, satirical work about a brain damaged 12-year old boy (Yuri) who comes to the attention of a dying Stalin, due to his lack of social inhibition, becoming the Iron Man’s food taster and companion. Stalin’s health is declining rapidly and he suffers from vascular dementia making his behaviour even more erratic. You have the ridiculous situation that his doctors are too afraid to treat him because they don’t want to be executed for failing to save him or to save him and have him execute them for some imagined crime.
Stalin’s ministers (some of whom seem actually psychopathic) conspire against him and each other with increasing viciousness, while Yuri, who is the supposedly damaged one but in reality is the most normal and most human of them all, watches on, witness to their cruelty. Yuri’s innocence makes him a hugely sympathetic character. The book is really quite funny in places while flagging the Kafka-esque madness of this increasingly unstable society. The reader is in the odd position of knowing more than the narrator because Yuri’s innocence means he doesn’t see the dangers around him, he cannot recognise the sinister motivations of other characters, while the reader recognises the threats posed. This is a brilliant book with a compelling hero.

This is a lovely, quirky novel that is quick and easy to read, although a little sad at times too. 12 year old Yuri is recruited to be a food taster and general dogsbody for the Great Leader of the Motherland. Although Yuri has been brain damaged, he notices all, especially the number of people who bear an uncanny resemblance to the Great Leader, as well as the political manoeuvring of the Great Leader’s subordinates, especially the odious Marshall Bruhah.

Wilson has captured the confusion and desperate times of this period, when people were expected to sacrifice all to their country, including their own family.

In this cleverly written satire about the last days of Stalin's regime in 1954, Yuri Romanovich Ziput is the twelve year old son of a vet at a Moscow Zoo. He is mentally damaged as the result of a childhood accident but has a simple, engaging personality and an open face that people trust. One night his father is called in to treat Stalin after a stroke (because all the doctors have been gaoled or put to death), taking Yuri with him to assist. After his father gives Stalin advice he doesn't want to hear about drinking and smoking, he disappears leaving Yuri with Stalin who takes a shine to him and appoints him as his official food taster. Stalin's inner circle treat Yuri as a simple idiot but he hears much of what is going on in the dying days of Stalin's rule, the paranoia, sadism, drunkeness and other excesses while his people live in fear of disappearing after saying or doing the wrong thing. Yuri is the perfect witness to the events unfolding around him with his naive but intelligent view of the world. Humorous and edgy, this satirical novel would be almost farcical if it were not for the fact that that it is based on real events.

I thought The Zoo was very good. It's a sharp and original observation of the brutality, self-delusion, self-centredness and self-regard of dictators and their entourage which is intelligent, at times rather funny and at others utterly horrifying.

Set in Moscow in 1953, a 12-year-old Yuri finds himself in the dying Stalin's inner circle as a food-taster. Yuri had a serious accident as a child which damaged his brain. This has left him still highly intelligent but with a naïve directness and inquisitiveness, and a face which leads people, even strangers, to confide in him. People often also believe him to be an "idiot boy" and forget his presence, so he hears a great deal which is not intended for other ears.

The story is narrated by Yuri and we see Stalin, Beria, Khrushchev and others through his eyes. It is a clever device, showing their monstrous behaviour in a new but no less horrifying light. We also get comments like this from the innocent Yuri, when a friend tells him that his uncle "got twelve years for doing precisely absolutely nothing at all. Zilch, Zero.
But that's Life. You don’t know what to believe for the best. Because, everyone knows, for *nothing* you only get nine."

I found Yuri's voice very convincing (although once or twice he does use slightly more poetic and advanced language than seems appropriate for his character) and the whole thing extremely engaging and readable. It's a fine satire which more than one current world leader would do well to take note of, as well as being a rather touching story as I became more and more engaged with Yuri and his understanding deepens of what is really happening. It's a very good read which will stay with me and which left me with plenty to think about. Warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Yuri, or to give him his full name, Yuri Romanovich Ziput, lives with his father in a staff apartment at the Kapital Zoo. He was six and a half when he was hit by a milk truck and then run over by a tram. Apart from that, he has also been hit by lightning and fallen off a roof, but his father tells him that he should always look on the bright side. Now twelve and a half, Yuri’s experiences have left him slow, forgetful and suffering fits. However, his impulsivity, brought on by cerebral trauma, has also resulted in a kind face that encourages confessions.

Confessions can be dangerous, especially in Russia in 1954. Among Papa’s words of wisdom are advice on thinking before he speaks, or, better still, not speaking at all. Papa, or Doctor Roman Alexandrovich Zipit, is a professor of Veterinary science at the Zoo. Yuri’s mother has been taken to a work camp and two suitcases sit ominously in the hall – one for Yuri and one for his Papa – just in case there is a knock on the door at night…

One evening, that knock comes and Yuri and his father are taken to see some very important people. For Stalin is old, and ill, and, not trusting doctors, his senior ministers have decided to get the advice of others in the medical profession. The result of this is that Yuri, with his childlike innocence and simplicity, becomes the food taster for the most important man in Russia. What unfolds is obviously satirical, but the author blends dark humour and pathos to create a moving and tragic tale of an innocent dumped into a place of extreme danger.

Those around the great Leader are kept in check by interminable dinner parties, with humiliating forfeits and drunkenness to loosen tongues. With access to those in charge, Yuri hears a lot, but does not necessarily understand what the consequences of his knowledge is. He acts as the perfect foil to the unfolding drama of the last days of Stalin’s life and of his bizarre inner circle. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

A wonderfully funny novel about one of the darkest periods of history when the former USSR was under the ruthless control of the ‘man of iron’ Josef Stalin.
This biting satire is narrated by Yuri, an engagingly innocent twelve year old, who lives in the staff apartment of the Kapital Zoo where his father is Professor of Vetinary Science. Yuri is epileptic and, after an accident involving a milk truck and a tram, ‘damaged. But only in my body. And mind. Not my spirit, which is strong and unbroken’. He’s an idiot savant with the face of ‘an angel on his best behaviour’ which makes people constantly confide in him.
When his father is required to treat a patient who ‘bears some strong resemblances to Comrade Iron Man’, Yuri goes with him. Clearly it is Stalin and he is diagnosed as being at risk of a stroke. His father is taken away but, because of his angelic face, Yuri becomes Stalin’s ‘official food taster, technician first class’, attending to the leader’s every whim. For Yuri his friendship ‘seems a dark, scary place’ but he has no choice. He begins a life of games of draughts, food-tasting and endless evenings of heavy drinking and American movies. Stalin loves cowboy films with Gary Cooper but hates the ‘odious cowboy actor’ John Wayne who is ‘an enemy of the proletariat.’ In his new role ‘fulfilling the demands of the job’ Yuri becomes, ‘at only twelve years of age, both a light smoker and a heavyish drinker.’ One of the funniest scenes shows us an evening watching the 30s comedy Bringing up Baby ‘a screwball komedy. Showing the decadence and futility of Amerikan life.’
Underlying the comedy of course there is the darkest atmosphere of terror, torture and fear administered by Stalin’s political coterie. Yuri has his nose broken by the sinister Bruhah and finds out how easily people disappear, erased from photos: ‘no man, no problem’. The terrifying Krushka describes his own role: ‘So many bullets. So many lists. So many pits to be dug. So much quicklime. It’s Hell itself to organise.’
On a marginally brighter note, Yuri finds friends in one of the men who act as body doubles for Stalin with ‘pock marks burned in his cheeks with acid’. But the situation is deteriorating. When the ‘man of steel’ has a stroke, everything becomes much worse for Yuri and he is eventually thrown into jail and at the mercy of the system, losing a finger to the torturer, Bruhah.
Of course, as this is a comedy it all turns out (comparatively) well for Yuri. He goes home, his spirit undaunted and waits for his father to return ‘It’s just a matter of patience. And never letting any dark doubt cloud your horizon.’ A bitter sweet ending, but, after a rollercoaster of hilarity and grim detail, it’s a message of hope. As in the epigraph at the beginning of the novel from Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

Published by Faber in July 2017

I came to The Zoo without having read any of Wilson's earlier novels, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself unable to put it down until the final, heart-wrenching conclusion. It may be something of a cliché but this book is a real tour-de-force that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let you relax as you anxiously follow the exploits of the twelve-and-a-half year old narrator, Yuri Zipit, through the tumultuous events taking place in the USSR of the 1950s.

Yuri is a narrator in the mould of Günter Grass's Oskar in The Tin Drum, someone who stumbles inadvertently through key events in his nation's history whilst delivering a scathing and often hilarious commentary on the corrupt powers that are able to control and disrupt the lives of millions. Like Oskar, Yuri is physically 'different' and this enables him to act as both a somewhat naive observer and also an unwitting participant in pivotal moments of his nation's history. At the same time, the zoo of the novel's title and its cantankerous inhabitants serve as an extended metaphor for the chaotic and unpredictable world that so thoroughly envelops him and his parents.

Wilson trained as a psychologist with a particular interest in the role of humour and this is evident in the way in which he handles many of the key scenes in this novel. His style is both incisively sharp and deeply sardonic, he is able to amuse and appal in equal measure, and even when we laugh out loud at the absurdities Yuri so vividly describes or endures there is always a niggling reminder that these events are only too reminiscent of what really took place under the rule of 'Comrade Iron-Man/Elephant'.

There are - necessarily - some graphic scenes which might distress readers of a more nervous disposition, but it would be impossible to weave a tale of such savage times without their inclusion. Yet despite all of this and the associated madness that Yuri is witness to, this is also a novel of warmth, compassion and familial love that will profoundly touch the heart of anyone who reads it.

The Zoo is a farcical romp through the last days of Stalin’s reign of terror in the Soviet Union.

Yuri is a twelve year old boy who claims to have suffered some form of brain damage as a child, leaving him a functional idiot. He can see everything that goes on around him, he can learn facts, but he hasn’t the guile to understand people. Yuri takes everyone at face value, all the time. By a quirk of fate, he ends up meeting Stalin who likes having a confidant he can trust completely. So he immediately appoints Yuri to be his food taster, thereby necessitating Yuri’s witnessing of the last days of the Great Leader’s life.

And this is not a glamorous end to a glorious life. Basically, Stalin is holed up in his dacha with this inner circle (Beria, Khrushchev, Bulganin and Malenkov), all of whom want to usurp the crown. These five do not like each other, they do not trust each other, but they end up spending all their time together watching films and playing drinking games. The plotting, aside from the crazy drunken antics, the stunt doubles follows Harrison E. Salisbury’s 1983 account of Stalin’s last days faithfully. It is a surprise – indeed a frustration – then that Christopher Wilson insists on using near approximations of the protagonists real names. Stalin (man of steel) becomes Iron-Man; Beria becomes Bruhah; Molotov especially irritatingly becomes Motolov, etc. It feels like it is cheapening what could otherwise have felt like a satire to take seriously.

Because, underneath all the drunken japes, this is a pretty good study of the paranoia of a brutal regime waiting for its leader to die. As a kitchen cabinet, the regime has the power of life and death over anyone unfortunate enough to cross its path, but yet remains powerless to bring about any meaningful social or economic change. Stalin himself is portrayed as a tired, sick and unsatisfied man, troubled about the legacy he would leave. He was lonely and desperate for unguarded, non-judgemental company, yet he had created a world in which only an idiot boy could fulfil that function. If anything, Yuri’s role was that of the mediaeval court fool, speaking truth to a king by dressing it up as wit.

In a neat story arc, we see Yuri come from ordinary society to mix with the elite; and then we see him return to ordinary society. It feels like completing a circle, albeit a rather sad circle because, as Khrushchev says to Yuri: “Poor child… You see it all. Yet you understand nothing”. But in a way Yuri inhabits a fool’s paradise. Right up to the end, as his world disintegrates around him, Yuri still remains optimistic.

This really is a great read. Short, lively, humorous but thoughtful. Yuri’s narrative voice is fabulous and his perpetual innocence is captivating. Stalin’s inner circle is well drawn and Beria, in particular, is a standout character – vain, foppish, ambitious and sadistic. He is a well-rounded psychopath. Given the way history played out, it might have been interesting to dwell just a little more on the character of Khrushchev whom history has treated with affection – it would have been nice to explore his role in the purges, his role in the Ukraine and his personal relationship with Stalin a little more closely. But this is a minor complaint in a tight and entertaining novel.