Beukes's energetic noir phantasmagoria, the winner of this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award, crackles with original ideas (Jeff VanderMeer New York Times Book Review)Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler. I loved it, it's going to be huge (Paul Cornell)I couldn't put this down. It's weird, thrilling, funny... filled with sleazy characters and lots of bad attitude (Mike Nicol)Lauren Beukes is very, very good (William Gibson)An unfamiliar land full of familiars, a broken Johannesburg peopled with damaged wonders... If our words are bullets, Lauren Beukes is a marksman in a world of drunken machine-gunners (Bill Willingham)Zoo City is pure originality ... a book that had me reading it revelling in Beukes' magical way with words (SF Signal)At times the witty and lyrical prose is sheer magic, the story captivating and the characters exotic, cruel and beautiful while the backdrop of Johannesburg seethes with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating (SciFi & Fantasy Books)

Lauren Beukes' Arthur C Clarke Award-winning tale of a young woman trapped in a brutal city but looking for a way out . . .

'A major, major talent' George R. R. Martin

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheque, she's forced to take on her least favourite kind of job - missing persons.

Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions reside.

Instead it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she'll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives - including her own.

'Beukes is very *very* good. It feels effortless, utterly accomplished' William Gibson

'Beukes brings a secret tenderness and humanity to her off-kilter portrait of the here and now' Guardian

'Exquisitely paced and impeccably controlled. An enormously satisfying novel' New York Times Book Review