With this brilliant and unclassifiable text, Stéphanie Hochet pays tribute to rabbits, those balls of fur that are far more profound and mysterious than they seem at first glance.

Stéphanie Hochet offers a brief treatise on the cusp of various genres, a didactic essay that traces the history of representations of lagomorphs in human society. Those representations can be found on all four corners of the globe – from ancient Greek ceramics to bawdy Medieval texts via Asian myths and legends, as well as a wide range of pictorial, literary and cinematographic works.

Warriors in Japanese mythology, rabbits also incarnate kawaii – a childlike, sometimes lascivious style. Protagonists of numerous proverbs, they are also at the root of natalist policies inspired by their extraordinary reproductive capacity, like the Polish term “rabbitism.” Household pets, cute plush toys, allegories of deprivation, bellicose spirits, tenacious pests, religious symbols… All that and more, rabbits are far more than just cute little creatures hopping around the forest. Dizzyingly paradoxical figures, they have a lot to say about our own civilizations!

After Éloge du chat (In Praises of Cats, 2014, 10,000 copies sold), the author offers us a charming, surprising and delightfully informative new bestiary.