Inside a zebra

Micaela Chirif / Renato Moriconi
Buenos Aires: Limonero, 2018; Txalaparta, 2021; Rome: Gallucci, 2022; São Paulo: Mundo Benvira, 2023
ISBN 978-987-45988-8-2

♦ Honorable Mention – Talking Pictures Award, New York Rights Fair
♦ White Ravens 2019

Sometimes we see life head-on, and sometimes only from the side. Sometimes we look at it through a window, from a balcony, or hidden behind oversized sunglasses. There are moments when life appears checkered, and moments when it is painted entirely pink. We have all seen the world from a peculiar perspective at some point, but… have you ever wondered what life would look like from inside a zebra?

Reviews

A beautiful and strange book. As strange as living inside a zebra. As beautiful as learning to fly.
Taller del Caracol

WHAT A BOOK! What a book… unlike anything I have ever read. A strange, unsettling, disconcerting read. Impossible to finish it feeling indifferent; in fact, impossible not to read it multiple times to grasp its many layers, the empty spaces, the expressions of the figures…
Blog do Livrinho

What makes this book special is that its text is both hermetic and disconcerting, yet at the same time open to countless interpretations. The first-person narrator explains that they lived inside a zebra for a while, until one day, the zebra asked if they should “move on,” at which point they flew into the clouds. It is unclear what the zebra represents: a real animal, a space, a location, a particular mindset, an emotion, a dream… But the answer is irrelevant. This very ambiguity is what makes Micaela Chirif’s text so captivating—there is no explanation, no resolution. Readers must determine its meaning, or perhaps the absence of one, for themselves.
White Ravens 2019 Catalog