Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda-Leopard

By Patrick O'Brian

Book Overview

A novel originally published while the author was still in school follows the adventures of a fantastic beast whose father was a giant panda and whose mother was a snow leopard.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393049183
• ISBN13: 9780393049183
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 0.6" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Caesar

This book follows the life of a panda leopard. At first, he's nameless, living with his brothers, sister, and mother in a cave. Later he's captured, put into a cage and domesticated. He learns first to live this kind of life. Then he learns to love his master. He comes to the point where his love for his master overcomes his reason. Caesar questions this, but comes back to the fact he does love his master and wouldn't think of disobeying or hurting him. The story also covers another part of his life where Caesar finds a mate and becomes a father. And all the trials and rewards this new life brings. The book basically documents the nature of nature. Right off the bat, the book is an account of nature, its vicious brutality, and its laws. How in nature, death is an everyday thing and its just part of nature. Caesar looses everything, his family, the family he brings into the world, and the family he makes when his master captures him. The story follows him through this all and his feelings towards this. The book offers no sympathy towards anything living as that is not the nature of nature.

A prodigy

Many children of fourteen have trouble reading, much less writing well enough to get published. It's a child's story, but already you get glimpes of Aubrey/Maturin. If you're a book collector--and even if you are not--get it for value, and of course for the sheer pleasure of reading what is truly a well-told tale. The first sentence of the first page grabbed me and it never let go. Listen to this:First you must understand that I am a panda-leopard. My father was a giant panda and my mother a snow-leopard. And four sentences down the page:The first thing to make any great impression on my mind was the killing of my sister.I challenge anyone to put the book down after that.