Like Patrick Susskind's Perfume, Felidae is a remarkable literary thriller from Europe with dark, historical resonance. With his American debut, Akif Pirinçci has accomplished a leap of the imagination so thrilling and original that the book has already become an international sensation, rising to the top of bestseller lists in Germany, France, and Italy.
Although it unfolds daily around us - in our backyards, kitchens, basements, and alleys - the world of Felidae is unknown to mere humans. Our witty, ironic guide is Francis, an ordinary housecat with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Refusing to accept the banality of death, Francis sets out to connect a chain of events, each link more mysterious and perplexing than the last: a rash of grisly psychopathic murders, a bizarre sect that worships an unknown martyr, an ancient crypt whose guardian is half insane, and the journal of a human scientist whose obsessive experiments violated all moral codes, human or feline ...
The answers to Francis's questions are not simple. They concern the nature of good and evil, subjugation and liberation, and the ambiguities of justice. They are about cruelty, vengeance, the necessary cycle of creation and destruction, and even genocide.
Akif Pirinçci has brilliantly imagined a world where cats speak and act almost as humans do. Highly praised upon publication in Europe, Felidae is a subtle psychological thriller that delves into the reader's subconscious to illuminate the best and worst about ourselves.
International praise for Felidae
"Pirinçci has written an amazing and unique book. Felidae is playful and seductive, rigorous in its depiction of a feline sensibility, an engrossing mystery thriller that resonates beyond the world of cats."
Robert Ferrigno, author of The Horse Latitudes and Chesire Moon
"For two years, Akif Pirinçci, the twenty-nine-year-old author living in Bonn, did research with cat breeders, scientific institutes and cat-loving little old ladies - then he wrote Felidae, probably the most exquisite suspense novel of the year."
Stern
"According to Antonio Faeti...'an extraordinary psychological atlas of today. A book so fascinating that it leaves you speechless.' "
La Stampa
"Fantastical, humorous, true-to-life—with Felidae Pirinçci has fulfilled his promise of writing a vastly entertaining yet intelligent book."
Die Welt
"A feline detective novel - unexpected and brilliant."
Libération
"What begins as a homicidal Watership Down eventually resonates with echoes of Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, Hitchcock, and Spiegelman. Calling this powerfully imagined parable a cat book is like describing Maus as a comic book for people who like mice."
Kirkus Reviews
" … Although being primarily a work of crime fiction, the Felidae series discuss many contemporary ethical problems and philosophical questions, one of them being the relationship between mankind and animals. Thus, the Felidae series are more complex and multi-layered than many contemporary crime novels …"
Wikipedia
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