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The story at the heart of “Giraffe” (Penguin Press, 298 pages, $24.95), the flawed but striking new novel by J.M. Ledgard, falls into the category of truths that are stranger than fiction. On April 30, 1975, the zoo in the Czechoslovakian town of Dvur Kralove was sealed off by the military and secret police. A sharpshooter and a team of butchers, dressed in biohazard suits, were brought in under cover of night, and given a gruesome order: The zoo’s entire herd of 49 giraffes — the largest in captivity — was to be killed. No written records were kept of this massacre, whose goal was to erase the giraffes from history, to make it seem they had never existed. Indeed, the giraffe massacre was so well concealed that there seems to be no mention of it on the Internet, except in connection with Mr. Ledgard’s novel. This might give rise to the suspicion that the whole thing is an audacious hoax, were it not for the author’s solemn assurances that “‘Giraffe’ is a true story.”
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