Reading Order
The Zookeeper's Wife Reading Order
Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife (2007) is the nonfiction narrative of Jan and Antonina Żabiński — the Warsaw Zoo directors who used their bombed-out zoo to hide and save approximately three hundred Jewish men, women, and children during the Nazi occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945. Antonina Żabiński's diaries and Jan's postwar memoir provided the primary sources for Ackerman's account, which was adapted into the 2017 film with Jessica Chastain.
Where to start
The Zookeeper's Wife
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The Zookeeper's Wife
Diane Ackerman·2007·Start here — the complete standalone narrative; the story of the Warsaw Zoo during the German occupation.
The Zookeeper's Wife — Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Zookeeper's Wife a true story?
Yes. The Zookeeper's Wife is a work of narrative nonfiction based on the real lives of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who ran the Warsaw Zoo and who used the zoo's bombed-out buildings and underground network to hide Jewish escapees from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. Antonina Żabiński's diaries, which she wrote in a coded style to hide their content from German inspectors, provided Ackerman's primary source material. Jan Żabiński also participated in the Warsaw Uprising. Both Jan and Antonina Żabiński were honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
What should I read next after The Zookeeper's Wife?
Readers continue with other WWII nonfiction narratives about those who risked their lives to save Jews: The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, and The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris are popular companions. For readers who loved Ackerman's natural history dimension, A Natural History of the Senses (1990) and The Human Age (2014) are Ackerman's own broader works.
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