Bestiary

From "a writer of remarkable gifts," "Borges with emotional weight, comes a tale that is at once a fantastical historical mystery, a haunting love story, and a glimpse into theuncanny-the quest for a long-lost book detailing the animals left off Noah's Ark.
Xeno Atlas grows up in the Bronx, his Sicilian grandmother's strange stories of animalspirits his only escape from the legacy of his mother's early death and his stern father's long absences as a common seaman. Shunted off to an isolated boarding school, with his father'sactivities abroad and the source of his newfound wealth grown increasingly mysterious, Xeno turns his early fascination with animals into a personal obsession: his search for the Caravan Bestiary. This medieval text, lostfor eight hundred years, supposedly details the animals not granted passage on the Ark-griffins, hippogriffs, manticores, and basilisks--the vanished remnants of a lost world sometimes glimpsed in theshadowy recesses of our own.
Xeno's quest takes him from the tenements of New York to the jungles of Vietnam to the ancient libraries of Europe-but it is only by riddling out his ownfamily secrets that he can hope to find what he is looking for. A story of panoramic scope and intellectual suspense, The Bestiary is ultimately a tale of heartbreak andredemption. "From the Hardcover edition."