Mitz by Sigrid Nunez (Soft Skull Press, 1998)
In the summer of 1934, Leonard and Virginia Woolf adopted a marmoset named Mitz. The tiny, sickly monkey had been rescued from a junk store by a wealthy friend who was quite relieved when Leonard volunteered to care for it. Leonard nursed it back to health, and for the next several years, the marmoset went wherever he did—sitting upon his shoulder, or tucked into his jacket pocket. Sigrid Nunez’s story of Mitz is also the story of this famous literary couple, on the eve of the second World War, years bright with their work and with the delight of their small companion, yet darkened by that approaching shadow. To see their lives through the marmoset is to draw the line between colonial extraction and fascist expansion—twin horrors that create and feed upon each other, both seeming distant right up until the moment when they knock down your door.
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