Zoo City

“I reach past him to pull out a vintage navy dress with a white collar, match it up with jeans and slops, and finish off with a lime green scarf over the little dreadlock twists that conveniently hide the mangled wreckage of my left ear—let’s call it Grace Kelly does Sailor Moon. This is not so much a comment on my style as a comment on my budget.”

As Zinzi describes her personal style, Beukes introduces Zinzi’s voice and outlook. Zinzi’s former role as a lifestyle journalist still influences the way she presents herself to the world: She makes the most of what she has, hiding her scars from the world as much as possible. Her playful description of her look is lightly self-deprecating, as is her voice throughout the novel.

“The problem with being mashavi is that it’s not so much a job as a vocation. You don’t get to choose the ghosts that attach themselves to you. Or the things they have with them.”

Zinzi reflects on her shavi, finding lost things. She describes the lost objects she sees throughout the day as “ghosts,” noting that she has no choice but to see them, as well as the people attached to them. This existence is the case for all mashavi: Magical power itself is a ghostly attachment that cannot be eliminated.

“The Maltese is blank. Some rare people are. They’re either pathologically meticulous or they don’t care about anything. But it still creeps me out. The last person I encountered with no lost things at all was the cleaning lady at Elysium. She threw herself down an open elevator shaft.” 

Zinzi meets Mark, the Maltese, for the first time. Since her talent is finding lost objects, she knows that most people have connections to the people and things they regret losing. When someone does not have these attachments, it is disturbing. This is her first evidence that there is something suspicious about Mark and Amira.