Great beasts and American exceptionalism: the world through the eyes of a mammoth

In an ambitious, hilarious, clever beast of a novel, Chris Flynn excavates the strange fascination powerful men have for big pets

A story of man’s self-destructive impulse to conquer nature and about American exceptionalism, with detours through Napoleonic France and the end of the Irish rebellion in 1801 … narrated by a 13,000-year-old fossilised mammoth?

My doubts were as heavy as those ancient bones of Mammut americanum, going by the name “Mammut”, on the eve of his auction in New York in 2007, along with the remains of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, “T. bat”, a prehistoric penguin, “Paleo”, a pterodactyl, “Peterodactyl antiquus”, and the hand of an Egyptian mummy belonging to Pharaoh Hatshepsut, “Hattie”.

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Mammoth, by Chris Flyn, is released through UQP and available now ($29.99)

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