The Queen’s zebra has been stolen.
But why?
AT THE THRESHOLD of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment has taken 18th century Paris by storm. The Palais Royal has become the hub of free thought and freer behaviour. A whirlwind of passionate debates unfolds in the city’s new cafés with a flourishing of theatre, satire, and opera.
George Du Paon, still mourning his beloved twin sister, has a famous taxidermy workshop near the Seine. As his close friend Nicolas guides him through the libertarian and libertine revolution of the time, George becomes entrusted with the Queen of England’s favourite deceased zebra.
George and his young protégée, Jeanne, are delighted at the prospect of breathing life back into the unusual specimen while pondering how to capture the essence of its nature. Among the questions being debated at the Académie des Sciences is why both the horse and the ass can be tamed, but the zebra can-not. And so the discussion evolves: What parts of the zebra make it so unique?
Is a zebra more than the sum of its parts? How connected are the sexes? Is a garden part of nature?
George is surrounded by a cast of figures ranging from the formidable Mme de Staël, Ambassador Thomas Jefferson, the cross-dresser general Chevalier d’Éon, and the immensely popular womanizer Benjamin Franklin. As intriguing questions about the human spirit, reductionism, social class, injustice, and the gap between science and religion swirl and set the stage, fiction, history, and philosophy intermingle. Just as George’s feelings for his assistant deepen, the zebra suddenly vanishes…🦓
A Parisian Journey
Explore twelve short films about the book, shot on location around Paris:
About the book
Reviewers
“Charming, erudite, entertaining, informative, ingenious and philosophically intriguing. As with magical realism, this novel blends the mundane with the marvelous—except in this case, the marvelous emerges not from magic but from historical characters and amazing documented details.”
Betty Sue Flowers, Emerita Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin
“Kupers takes us into Enlightenment Paris with a story that is both cleverly light and yet thoughtful and melancholy: a taxidermist, a zebra, and a circle of historical figures, who take us on an adventure into such provocative questions as: what makes things unique, what is natural, how best to handle loss, can love heal us or not? It’s engaging, erudite, and refreshingly original — a philosophical novel that also entertains.”
Brian Castellani, co-author The Atlas of Social Complexity
“A unique read combining an entertaining yarn about a taxidermist and a commission to preserve a zebra, guest appearances by various historical figures and stimulating philosophical reflections on the limits of reductionism. Propounding systems thinking in the form of a novel is a master stroke by Kupers. Read, smile and reflect!”
Martin Reeves, Chair, BCG Henderson Institute
“Roland Kupers has a rare talent to make complexity simple, to make the entanglement of humans with their environment tangible, understandable – and fun. By doing so he engages a broad audience in these important ways of seeing and being in the world. We need experimenters and storytellers like Roland to shift minds to a truly planetary way of looking at current affairs.”
Wouter van Noort, Chief Opinion Editor NRC Handelsblad
About the author
Roland Kupers is an author, sculptor and policy advisor. Originally studying theoretical physics, he has always been intrigued by how complex systems work, in society and in nature. This book is an exploration of how we came to embrace reductionism during the Enlightenment, and how it came at the price of loosing a systemic view of the complexity of the world. The intellectuals of the day realised this, up to a point, and debated the merits of the choices they had to make.
And there are so many historic and irresistible anecdotes in this philosophical novel set in 18th century Paris. And George falls in love with Jeanne. And there is a zebra. 🦓