Reviews
“A most unusual debut novel from Australian playwright, film producer and theatre director Andrew Upton… An allegory in the spirit of Animal Farm, the titular chicken explores the world around her, alongside her friend Gibby, a philosophical toad… It is a brutish world for the animals who share our planet. Layered and beautifully written, the wonders of the natural world are on a collision course with humanity, and each other.”
Susan Chenery
The Guardian
The Booklist
“The eponymous heroine of playwright Andrew Upton’s novel is a chicken with a deformed foot… Krank Fuss forms a tight bond with Gibby, the toad that thinks he’s a frog and together they negotiate the chaos that breaks out. We’re in ’30s Germany and amid nature, red in tooth and claw, this sort of allegory offers hope through its galline central character.”
Jason Steger
The Booklist
“Krank Fuss has a kind of beauty, in resurgent snatches of meaning that fade or regurgitate in their repetition… None of which denies the bejewelled character of the narrative invention, nor the physical beauty of the book, with its handsome hardback binding, rich, thick paper and evocative drawings.”
Peter Craven
The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age
“A novel about war and peace that is as quirky in style as its author. Framed as a letter from a German WWI veteran to his daughter in Nazi Germany in 1937, it resonates with our own tumultuous times. The titular character is a chicken whose German name translates as ‘sick foot’ – a reference to a damaged claw that means she is ostracised and must find a way through the cruelty of a hierarchical farmyard. The anthropomorphised chickens, toad and fox in this fable told by war veteran Rudi Spengler, like those in Orwell’s Animal Farm, bring us messages about power and conflict.”
Helen Trinca
The Weekend Australian Magazine