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Robert Twigger
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The Extinction Club Hardcover – Deckle Edge, July 23, 2002

by Robert Twigger (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
See all formats and editions
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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, Pére 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.

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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    William Morrow
  4. Publication date
    July 23, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0688175392
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0688175399
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Twigger isn't your typical nature writer, focusing intently on the life habits of an endangered and misunderstood species. In The Extinction Club he rambles and reflects his way all around his ostensible topic--the nearly extinct Pere David's deer. In fact, he spends the first fifty or so pages telling readers why he wrote the book, and musing on everything from libraries to his grandfather. It's a slow start for readers curious about the deer, but once Twigger begins divulging details about how the species, native to China, has survived in Bedfordshire, England, you'll be hooked. Twigger has a hipster's sense of irony and a postmodern storyteller's keen sense of the absurd, allowing him to avoid a lot of nature-writing clichés. Critics have accused him of being self-referential, and he does spend too much time in The Extinction Club describing meetings with publishers, his time at a survival camp, and his life in Oxford. But the book works in the end, both as a history of a little-known chapter of wildlife biology and as a meditation on nature and truth. --Therese Littleton

From Booklist

The milu, an exotic species of deer, originally was found in China. Extinct in its native land since the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, the deer was saved for posterity in several unrelated steps. Roughly 1,000 years ago, the Chinese emperors had created a deer reserve exclusively for their own hunting. In the late 1860s, the French missionary Pere David spirited a herd away from this reserve and sent them to France. Though they did not thrive in France, some of these deer ended up on the estate of the eleventh duke of Bedford in England, where they flourished and thus escaped extinction. Twigger turns his humorous gaze on this unlikely salvation of the emperor's deer, and as he did in Big Snake (2000), manages to become a participant in the story, writing not only of the history of the deer but also of how he wrote the history. Twigger brings a mordant wit to this examination of an endangered species and the act of writing about it. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; 1st edition (July 23, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0688175392
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0688175399
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

About the author

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Robert Twigger

Robert Twigger

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Robert Twigger has won many prizes and awards including the Newdigate Poetry Prize (the world's oldest poetry prize- also won by Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin) the Somerset Maugham award and the William Hill Sports book of the year award for Angry White Pyjamas- a book that has been continuously in print for 25 years in 2022. He has written fourteen books which have been translated into 20 languages including Ukrainian and Vietnamese, three poetry collections and writes/illustrates a quarterly memoir comic called This Simple Life- which you can get from roberttwigger.com. He has written and illustrated a new book about the Lake District called 36 islands. In the past he wrote about several expeditions to remote parts of the world he has taken part in. He has published one novel Dr Ragab's Universal Language.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
5 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

L. Buck
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect.
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2004
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.
5 people found this helpful
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3.0 out of 5 stars The Extinction Club
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2002
The legendary deer known as the Milu, was thought to be extinct until a Basque missionary, Pere David stumbled upon them in the Chinese emperor's private park in the second half of the 19th century. Pere David smuggled a specimen to Europe igniting in the process, a clamour among several European nations to acquire a live animal. Eventually the Boxer rebellion led to the deer's extirpation from China but a herd survived in England on the private estate of the 11th Duke of Bedford. Robert Twigger's tale is a mix of whimsical, sometimes cheeky romps through history, and modern day divergences into the meaning of truth, myths and evolution.
3 people found this helpful
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beertree
4.0 out of 5 stars I did enjoy it, although is does open up very many ...
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2015
"A very different book" is probably what everyone could agree on after reading this. I did enjoy it, although is does open up very many cans with worms of all sizes and nutritional preferences. A bit of a challenge to keep an eye on all those crawlies. As some of his accounts seem very wacky on first sight, it actually helped to have wikipedia access on standby to see Twigger confirmed in theories, names and events he described. Thank goodness he is entertaining, but the gran finale of two pages on the extinction of our own humaneness, was what really launched the book into stratosphere. It came along so very unpretentious, hidden between chapters on Egyptian second hand book stores and some weird deer species. Suddenly it was there and then it was gone again. Like a shooting star. It made me copy that page and scotch it on my wall, the highest distinction of honour in my world. Yes, a very different book indeed.
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HK
4.0 out of 5 stars It all comes together in the end
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2004
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.
4 people found this helpful
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