A sexy, hilarious novel of wayward young expatriates — and the difference between doing good and feeling good.

In 1990, a 22-year-old college graduate named Gurney leaves behind a newborn daughter in an Iowa delivery room and escapes to Krakow, Poland, where everyone, it seems, is hunting for the next new thing. Upon this seductive frontier, Gurney devotes himself to a life of irresponsibility, guided by his cousin — and now roommate — Jane. A master manipulator, Jane occupies the center of Krakow's spiderweb of sexual and political intrigue. As Jane and Gurney's relationship swerves thrillingly close to the incestuous, Gurney crosses paths — and, often, swords — with Krakow's gallery of rogues and innocents. Among them: Wanda Zamoyski, his landlady's daughter, a virginal yet rebellious teenager who harbors a not-so-secret crush on Gurney and an abundance of anger at communism, capitalism, and her father; Dick Chesnutt, a doomed, sodden American expatriate who has been in Krakow since the early 1980s; Jackie Witherspoon, an ambitious young scholar of ambiguous sexuality and allegiance; and Zbigniew Zamoyski, Wanda's father, a hot-tempered, former Communist aristocrat who decides that the fun, and Gurney, must be stopped. As Gurney's life becomes ever more heedless and sybaritic, ramifications accrue and tensions build, leading to an exhilarating finale.

The magical world John Beckman has created seamlessly juxtaposes totalitarianism and freedom, the political and the personal. Steeped in literary allusion and evocative prose, The Winter Zoo marks the debut of a young writer of enormous talent and ambition.

"[An] intense, unsettling debut....[A] potent and deeply disturbing portrayal of innocence destroyed and corruption rampant: the work of a most ambitious and unquestionably gifted writer." Kirkus Reviews

"[A] wildly unfocused, over-the-top debut novel....The initial chapters offer a heady, entertaining brew of politics, sex and intrigue, but Beckman succumbs to his own literary excesses and loses control of his fascinating cast." Publishers Weekly

John Beckman, a native Iowan, was born in 1967. He has taught literature at universities in Poland, France, and California and is currently an assistant professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. This is his first novel.