La très catastrophique visite du zoo

Joël Dicker

Description

An award-winning writer and illustrator follows the story of a freewheeling group of Jewish revolutionaries to question whether the world was ready for their vision of multiracial solidarity--and whether we are today.

Molly Crabapple's great-grandfather Sam Rothman was a rough-and-tumble kid who worked at a tannery deep in the Pale of Settlement in 19th century Russia. As a young man he discovered that he was not just a laborer, but an artist--and soon after that, a revolutionary, enlisted in the strikes, street fights, and study groups of a new group of radicals sweeping the Pale: the Jewish Bund.

Crabapple saw herself not just in her grandfather's career as an artist, but in his revolutionary inclinations--she's spent much of her life in revolutionary enclaves around the world, marching in the streets and dancing till morning. In the story of the Bund, she discovered a movement of artists, philosophers, working people, and street fighters with a utopian vision for the world. They understood themselves as Jews--people with a special history of oppression--but also as part of an international movement that rejected all forms of ethnonationalism. They fought for this vision in the parlors, cafes, battlefields and prison camps. They helped spark the Russian Revolution, which soon swept them aside. They fought the emerging nationalist movements sweeping Europe (and the pogroms that often came along for the ride). And they battled Zionists over the destiny of the Jewish people. Their last stand was against the Nazis when they helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a dramatic and tragic climax to their story.

In retelling the epic history of the Bund and its extraordinary cast of characters during one of the most politically and culturally vibrant moments in European history, Crabapple asks a critical question: did the Bund fail because their of idea of solidarity was unworkable? Or did the world fail the Bund, who lost out to one blood-soaked idea after another, from Leninism to nationalism, Nazism to Zionism. This dynamic story is driven by that urgent question--and offers a new lens through which to see our contemporary struggles for solidarity in the face of tribalism.

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