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Lauren Beukes
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Nobody bar the other nominees seemed to be disappointed when the strikingly glamorous Lauren Beukes walked away with the coveted Arthur C Clarke Award this year with her second novel Zoo City . Okay as it’s her second novel you could claim she’s not a newcomer, but Zoo City was the book that really placed her on the world stage.
Like her first book Moxyland (released in 2008), Zoo City was set in an alternate version of her home country of South Africa and was a noirish mystery tale where the inhabitants of Johannesburg have been “animalled” and have various creatures attached to their backs. Even the hard-to-please William Gibson called it “very, very good” and Beukes won over the Clarke Awards audience over by turning up with a fake sloth over her shoulders, in tribute to her lead character, Zinzi. On stage she apologised that she had no speech to hand because her brother had nicked it and explained, fists clenched, that it simply said, “Curse you McDonald!”
What should she do next? Adapt the script for the movie version of Zoo City . The contract with the South African studio making the movie gives her first refusal, and we reckon she should take it.
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