Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Night of the Animals: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Night of the Animals: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Night of the Animals: A Novel
    Ebook637 pages10 hours

    Night of the Animals: A Novel

    By Bill Broun

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    In this imaginative debut, the tale of Noah’s Ark is brilliantly recast as a story of fate and family, set in a near-future London.

    Over the course of a single night in 2052, a homeless man named Cuthbert Handley sets out on an astonishing quest: to release the animals of the London Zoo. When he was a young boy, Cuthbert’s grandmother had told him he inherited a magical ability to communicate with the animal world—a gift she called the Wonderments. Ever since his older brother’s death in childhood, Cuthbert has heard voices. These maddening whispers must be the Wonderments, he believes, and recently they have promised to reunite him with his lost brother and bring about the coming of a Lord of Animals . . . if he fulfills this curious request.

    Cuthbert flickers in and out of awareness throughout his desperate pursuit. But his grand plan is not the only thing that threatens to disturb the collective unease of the city. Around him is greater turmoil, as the rest of the world anxiously anticipates the rise of a suicide cult set on destroying the world’s animals along with themselves.

    Meanwhile, Cuthbert doggedly roams the zoo, cutting open the enclosures, while pressing the animals for information about his brother. Just as this unlikely yet loveable hero begins to release the animals, the cult’s members flood the city’s streets. Has Cuthbert succeeded in harnessing the power of the Wonderments, or has he only added to the chaos—and sealed these innocent animals’ fates?

    Night of the Animals is an enchanting and inventive tale that explores the boundaries of reality, the ghosts of love and trauma, and the power of redemption.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 5, 2016
    ISBN9780062400819
    Author

    Bill Broun

    BILL BROUN has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist in both the US and the UK. He was appointed a resident fellow at Yale University in 2002, where he lectured in English and journalism, and currently serves as Associate Professor of English at East Stroudsburg University. Born in Los Angeles to an English father and an American mother, he now lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania.

    Related to Night of the Animals

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Volcano That Shrouded the Earth and Gave Birth to a Monster

      Oct 5, 2017

      Two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815. After perhaps 1,000 years’ dormancy, the devastating

      18 min read

    • Article

      Preliminaries

      Oct 19, 2021

      Preliminaries
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Heroine for Our Time

      Oct 7, 2017

      JENNIFER EGAN JOINED THE WHO’S WHO of American letters in 2011 when she won a Pulitzer for A Visit From the Goon Squad, an interlinked-story-collection-as-novel that bucked more than a few conventions. Her new novel Manhattan Beach is more convention

      1 min read

    • Article

      Speaking Of Shakespeare

      May 1, 2023

      Speaking Of Shakespeare
      3 min read

    • Article

      Postcards from Fairyland

      Jun 15, 2023

      Postcards from Fairyland
      10 min read

    • Article

      History Of Zoos

      Feb 23, 2023

      History Of Zoos
      8 min read

    • Article

      See The Light

      Dec 4, 2019

      My Geiger counter leaps from zero to .003 in a heartbeat. “It’s OK!” our guide, Helen, assures me. “This is a very low level of radiation!”The Geiger counters are handed out to the members of my tour and activated one by one. Helen assures us of the

      6 min read

    • Article

      Key Chain

      Feb 19, 2019

      Key Chain
      10 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Scenes

      Aug 9, 2018

      Those of our readers who have glanced at this page know that, over my past eight years as editor in chief, my favorite kind of letter is one in which I preview what the next pages hold. The staff here at ARCHAEOLOGY—editors Jarrett A. Lobell, Eric A.

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Fifth Season

      Oct 5, 2021

      The Fifth Season
      3 min read

    • Article

      How Dark Were The Dark Ages?

      Feb 20, 2020

      How Dark Were The Dark Ages?
      10 min read

    • Article

      Whom He May Devour: Saving her planet would ban her from paradise.

      Jan 7, 2016

      Lydia watched Ahad play the guitar. He leaned against a boulder, eyes shut, his face positioned to catch the last warm rays of the setting sun. His long, slender fingers caressed the strings, producing a slow, haunting melody. The music almost made h

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Frankish Settlements

      Oct 11, 2018

      The Frankish Settlements
      2 min read

    • Article

      Requiem for a Reader

      Jul 28, 2017

      My first memory of my father as a reader was him telling me to hurry up; it was almost time to silflay. The post Requiem for a Reader appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS

      Nov 6, 2019

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Small Wonder

      Apr 1, 2020

      Small Wonder
      3 min read

    • Article

      Pyramid Cakes

      Oct 19, 2021

      Pyramid Cakes
      2 min read

    Reviews for Night of the Animals

    3/5

    23 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I was not content with having started this book until I completed it. Almost every time I picked it up I thought "should I just quit this one or not". Some part of the world created in this book made me continue. I guess I just wanted to know what happened to the animals and while the dialogue was hard to swallow it had a nice rhythm. The future created in this book was interesting. I wish there'd been more details about that actually, especially prior to the end of the book. I'm glad I finished but not sure its one I could recommend to anyone.
    • 4/5
      What a strange, strange book—like nothing I've ever read. Very interesting, a bit shaggy, some beautiful language, big themes, a dystopian future, politics, animal ethics, cults, addiction, and a whole lot of other stuff to chew on. Which is to say, more later.
    • 3/5
      Overly verbose, making it a chore to get through, but I did like the focus on the animals escaping the captivity we've imposed on them. To me the book said a lot about the human bubble.