A parrot who speaks of love, a police dog who's a Buddhist, a microbe with an inferiority complex, a chameleon hoping to find himself, a scorpion with the fastest sting in the West? Viskovitz is each of these animals and many more; yet it is the human condition with all its highs and lows which is portrayed in these hilarious metamorphoses. You're an Animal Viskovitz is a whirlwind of ironic fables, a tour de force of comic inventiveness and intelligence unlike anything that you have read before.

In this wickedly hilarious collection of fables, Alessandro Boffa introduces us to Viskovitz and his never-ending search for his true love, Ljuba. As he changes from a lovelorn lion to a jealous finch, from a confused dung beetle to an enlightened police dog, Viskovitz embraces his metamorphoses with wry humor and an oftentimes painful sense of self.

As an ant, Viskovitz fights his way to the top where his egotism calls on the colony to create a monument to his greatness out of a piece of bread. As a sponge, he is horrified by the inbreeding in his family—“I’m my own mother-in-law!!!”—and yearns for a change in current so he can mate with Ljuba, who lies downstream. As a mantis, he asks his mother what his father was like, only to hear, “Crunchy. A bit salty. High in fiber.” Unfortunately, when he meets Ljuba shortly thereafter, he follows his father’s fate. And as a scorpion, his uncontrollably deadly efficiency meets its match in Ljuba and finds “no way to escape this intolerable, sinister happiness.”