It tells the story of Henry, a novelist, who receives the manuscript of a play in a letter from a reader.

Intrigued, Henry traces the letter to a taxidermist, who introduces him to the play's protagonists, two taxidermy animals—Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a monkey.

[1] Martel's earlier novel, Life of Pi, won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and sold seven million copies worldwide.

[2] Early on in the story, the protagonist, an author, (some say that the protagonist is a reflection of Yann himself) makes reference to Primo Levi's If This Is a Man; Art Spiegelman's Maus; David Grossman's See Under: Love; Martin Amis's Time's Arrow; George Orwell's Animal Farm; Albert Camus's The Plague; and Pablo Picasso's Guernica.

Extracts are quoted from Flaubert's "The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator" which is discussed at length.