The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman

The Zookeeper’s Wife is a non-fiction narrative recounting the heroic efforts of Antonina Żabińska and her husband, Jan Żabiński, during World War II. When soldiers of the Third Reich invade Poland on September 1, 1939, Jan is the ambitious director of the Warsaw Zoo. Antonina is an amazingly gifted woman who connects emotionally with all the animals in the zoo and the multitudes of human visitors and officials drawn to it. Within hours of the start of the war, the zoo is demolished by Nazi bombs, and within weeks, the zoo’s animals have been stolen for the zoo in Berlin or killed by soldiers. Over the next five years, Jan, a veteran of World War I, works a series of petty government jobs while Antonina struggles to maintain their living quarters in the zoo’s main house. Meanwhile, Antonina and Jan shepherd to safety more than 300 escapees from the notorious Warsaw Ghetto. Originally published in 2007, The Zookeeper’s Wife became a New York Times bestseller and won the 2008 Orion Award for literature connecting humans with nature. A motion picture based on the book, directed by Niki Caro, and starring Jessica Chastain as Antonina and Johan Heldenbergh as Jan, was released in 2017.