Inge Lohmark is the last of her kind. Adaptation is everything, something she is well aware of as the Biology teacher at the Charles Darwin high school in a country backwater of the former East Germany. It is the beginning of the new school year, and due to the dwindling population, as people look West for work and opportunities, it will be its last. Frau Lohmark has no sympathy for her pupils, and scorns indulgent younger teachers who talk to their students as peers, play games with them, or (worse) even go so far as to have 'favourites'. A strict devotee of the Darwinian principle of evolution, Inge firmly believes that only the best specimens of a species are fit to succeed.
Yet with a beautiful, tough ironic twist, The Giraffe's Neck turns to show that it is Inge who has failed to adapt to her changing environment. Everything and everyone now resists the old way of things and Inge's true character is finally revealed: she is a monster, archaic and authoritarian, a relic of the former East Germany, who has herself failed to adapt. Judith Schalansky was born and educated in the former East Germany.
The Giraffe's Neck, perfectly styled to ape the old-school textbooks of the era, complete with stunning illustrations of the evolution of different species, is a clever, playful and slyly insightful realisation of the demise of East German culture since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and showcases the trials of a country, adapting painfully slowly to a new environment.
