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 Eleonore, the matriarch, and that of Jerome, 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.

Following the rise and fall of a young man enslaved by the flesh, this novel tells of Gaspard, who arrives in 1760 Paris in order to escape the squalor of the countryside. After settling into the city, his excessive ambition soon transforms him into a man without virtue or conscience--a libertine. From the hustle and bustle of the Seine's port to the refinement of the Parisian parlors of the 18th century, Gaspard's life unfolds in the asphyxiating environments masterfully re-created by the author. "Trazando la ascension y la caida de un joven esclavizado por la carne, esta novela narra la historia de Gaspard, un hombre quien llega al Paris del 1760 escapando de la miseria del campo. Luego de instalarse en la ciudad, su ambicion desmedida pronto lo convierte en un hombre sin virtud ni conciencia--un libertino. De la agitacion portuaria del Sena al refinamiento de los salones parisinos del siglo XVIII, la vida de Gaspard se desenvuelve en las asfixiantes atmosferas magistralmente recreadas por el autor."

A prizewinning and word of mouth literary sensation in France, Animalia is an extraordinary epic that retraces the history of a modest French peasant family over the twentieth century as they develop their small plot of land into an industrial pig farm, a visceral, chilling tale of man and beast The small village of Puy-Larroque, southwest France, 1898. Eleonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and family with an iron hand. Eleonore passes her childhood with little heat and no running water, sharing a small room with her cousin Marcel, who does most of the physical labor on the farm. When World War I breaks out and the village empties, Eleonore gets a taste of the changes that will transform her world as the twentieth-century rolls on. As the reader moves into the second part of the novel, which takes place in the 1980s, the untamed world of Puy-Larroque seems gone forever. Now, Eleonore has herself aged into the role of matriarch, and the family is running a large industrial pig farm, where thousands of pigs churn daily through cycles of birth, growth, and death. Moments of sublime beauty and powerful emotion mix with the thoughtless brutality waged against animals that makes the old horrors of death and disease seem like simpler times. A dramatic and chilling tale of man and beast that recalls the naturalism of writers like Emile Zola, Animalia traverses the twentieth century as it examines man's quest to conquer nature, critiques the legacy of modernity and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, and questions whether we can hold out hope for redemption in this brutal world.

A prizewinning and word of mouth literary sensation in France, Animalia is an extraordinary epic that retraces the history of a modest French peasant family over the twentieth century as they develop their small plot of land into an industrial pig farm, a visceral, chilling tale of man and beast The small village of Puy-Larroque, southwest France, 1898. Eleonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and family with an iron hand. Eleonore passes her childhood with little heat and no running water, sharing a small room with her cousin Marcel, who does most of the physical labor on the farm. When World War I breaks out and the village empties, Eleonore gets a taste of the changes that will transform her world as the twentieth-century rolls on. As the reader moves into the second part of the novel, which takes place in the 1980s, the untamed world of Puy-Larroque seems gone forever. Now, Eleonore has herself aged into the role of matriarch, and the family is running a large industrial pig farm, where thousands of pigs churn daily through cycles of birth, growth, and death. Moments of sublime beauty and powerful emotion mix with the thoughtless brutality waged against animals that makes the old horrors of death and disease seem like simpler times. A dramatic and chilling tale of man and beast that recalls the naturalism of writers like Emile Zola, Animalia traverses the twentieth century as it examines man's quest to conquer nature, critiques the legacy of modernity and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, and questions whether we can hold out hope for redemption in this brutal world.