![]() ![]() ![]() He was also the subject of controversy: whether it was ethical to let live a bear born in captivity, one who would not survive in his natural habitat, and whether such an animal could cohabitate with other bears or be around humans. The characters of Tosca and Knut are based on real polar bears at the Berlin Zoo born in 2016, Knut became a sensation, attracted huge crowds, and was photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the cover of Vanity Fair. The novel contains three memoirs of three generations of polar bears, each of whom becomes less anthropomorphized: the unnamed grandmother speaks with humans freely, her daughter Tosca communicates with her trainer through dreamlike states, while her grandson Knut can only use gestures. ![]() But it is also a critique of the capitalist exploitation of the human predilection toward conserving (especially cuddly and cute) nonhuman animal species which takes the form of consumerism rather than activism. Memoirs of a Polar Bear, a novel by Yoko Tawada originally published in German as Etüden im Schnee: Roman (2014) and translated into English by Susan Bernofsky in 2016, is a climate change parable, since its protagonists, three polar bears, are at risk from warming seas and melting ice caps. ![]()
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