The Extinction Club

By Robert Twigger

Book Overview

From Robert Twigger, the internationally acclaimed author of Angry White Pyjamas and Big Snake, comes The Extinction Club, the brilliant, peculiar, and complex tale of the Milu.

For one thousand years, the Milu, an exotic species of deer with the neck of a camel, the horns of a stag, the feet of a cow, and the tail of a donkey, existed only in the Chinese emperor's private park in Beijing. But in the second half of the nineteenth century a Basque missionary, P re David, became the first Westerner ever to see a Milu. Transfixed by the strange beast, he risked his life to obtain a specimen, then embalmed it and sent it to Paris in a diplomatic bag. The preserved remains caused quite a stir across Europe, and zoologists clamored to get hold of a live animal. Within a very short time, every major nation in Europe possessed a Milu. But most failed to thrive and died quickly in their new surroundings, and due to war -- most notably the Boxer Rebellion -- they became extinct in their native habitat as well. Yet the exotic deer were able to survive in one place -- Bedfordshire, England -- due to the nurturing of a devoted caretaker, the 11th Duke of Bedford, who kept a herd at Woburn Abbey. This labor and persistence paid off nearly a century later in 1986, when a part of the British herd was returned to China. And to this day the very rich hunt the Milu -- for a steep price -- in wild game reserves throughout the world, but most notably in Texas.

In his fascinating tale of nature, civilization, and history, Robert Twigger poignantly recounts the story of this strange and rare animal while providing a riveting meditation on a number of human obsessions -- evolution, truth-telling, extinction, myth-making, and survival.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688175392
• ISBN13: 9780688175399
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: William Morrow
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Intriguing..

this book, found as others in the sales stack has been one of the best pickups of the last year. A good, and interesting read.

It all comes together in the end

I also picked this up on the bargain rack. I was expecting a sort of research text on the deer. It actually is much more than that--it's part travelogue and part personal journey on the part of the author as well. He relates to us strange stories of bizarre people he meets in his research, thoughts on reading, various bits and pieces of history, and an ongoing story about trying to find a secondhand bookstore in Cairo. As I read it, I was enjoying it, but it felt rather fractured...up until the last few pages where he brings all the threads into the book together into one common theme, making me shake my head at the control he had over the various stories all along.

Perfect.

I picked this book up on the bargain rack of my local bookstore. I don't like to pass up a chance for a low-priced hardcover, and am I ever glad I didn't. Everyone will tell you this book is about deer. Not just any deer. Rare deer. But it's about so much more than that. Whether you see it as fact or fiction, or 'mostly true', the book is captivating. While seemingly hare-brained and madcap in its construction, the text flows together in a surreal way. Twigger penned the words perfectly, and it's a book not only for deer-lovers, but for writers, too. Because much of the book is about writing another book and finding book stores and raiding libraries and the like, anyone who loves books should also love it. I suppose I must have gotten lucky, liking both books and deer, with a slight bent for villains like the Major. It's hard to do the text justice. You'll just have to go read it yourself, I suppose.

The Extinction Club

An amazing, entertaining, illuminating and yet at times even infuriating piece of work. At its base, the book is about the pere david deer, a species that exists only to be hunted. Extinct in the wild for hundreds if not thousands of years, a herd of deer stayed alive in a walled-off compound in China's Forbidden City for several centuries, where only the emperor was allowed to hunt them and eat their meat. A Western monk "discovered" the deer in the late 19th Century, and sent a few back to Europe, where they were admired for their unusual appearance. Soon after, a combination of factors during the Boxer Rebellion wiped out the Chinese herd, leaving a small British herd as the only survivors. The population now thrives, and some have even been returned to China, but the herds are essentially kept alive through money earned by rich folks paying thousands of dollars to shoot them.But Twigger's book is much more than that. It's an examination of how he came to write the book; it's a personal history; it's a book full of self-doubts and false starts; it's an extended treatise on the nature of extinction (both of species and of skills). It jumps around from idea to idea, from setting to setting, from time period to time period, never telling a cohesive story until it all comes together in the end. At times, the book is so unusual it reads like fiction. (Reading the book, I began to doubt the pere david deer even existed, but a quick Google search found several photos of them online.)Ultimately, this is an entertaining and thought-provoking book, even if it is a bit self-indulgent. Worth checking out.