PositivePandora MagazineFrom the very first pages, Animalia establishes itself as a text that demands attention and rewards it with visceral prose that doesn’t simply create a world, but becomes part of its very fabric. It’s dense in a way that every page holds its own weight. The dialogue is sparse and comes in only when it is required ... The prose makes you aware of every form of life, from humans to other mammals, from lizards to flies to microorganisms—everything is pulsating, moving, surviving ... Jean-Baptiste Del Amo has published four novels in France. Animalia is his latest one and after having won the Prix du Livre Inter in 2017, is the first of his works to appear in English. It is translated by Frank Wynne, whose work carefully builds this linguistic world in English and never fails to live up to the richness of the original.
