Also, there's a stolen bird! I'd say I couldn't put it down, but Zebra would never approve a cliche, so I'll pay it a compliment she might actually accept: this book metabolized me.' - Danielle Dutton, author of Margaret the First ' Call Me Zebra is like nothing else I've read, geo-political and bookish and sexy, quite refreshingly nuts and yet a ripping good read. ' Zebra is exile as education, history as passion, life as literature, and literature as death.' - Tom McCarthy, author of the Man Booker Prize-finalist Satin Island and Remainder 'This fierce meditation on life and love, a tour de force by self-proclaimed literary terrorist Oloomi (Fra Keeler), is one that many will read and reread.' - Library Journal 'An arresting exploration of grief alongside a powder keg of a romance.' - Booklist This is a brilliant, demented, and bizarro book that demands and rewards all the attention a reader might dare to give it.' - Kirkus This is a sharp and genuinely fun picaresque, employing humor and poignancy side-by-side to tell an original and memorable story.' - Publishers Weekly They push and pull their way across the Mediterranean, wondering with each turn if their love, or lust, can free Zebra from her past.Īn adventure tale, a love story, and a paean to the power of language and literature starring a heroine as quirky as Don Quixote, as introspective as Virginia Woolf, as whip-smart as Miranda July, and as spirited as Frances Ha, Call Me Zebra will establish Van der Vliet Oloomi as an author 'on the verge of developing a whole new literature movement' ( Bustle). Neither are wrong neither can let the other go.

He thinks she's unhinged she thinks he's pedantic. Zebra overwhelms him with her complex literary theories, her concern with death, and her obsession with history. Their connection is magnetic their time together fraught. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago.īooks are Zebra's only companions - until she meets Ludo.

When war came, her family didn't fight they took refuge in books. Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. From an award-winning young author, a novel following a feisty heroine's quest to reclaim her past through the power of literature - even as she navigates the murkier mysteries of love.

Call me zebra