Falling in Love While Stuffing a Zebra

A Philosophical Tale

Roland Kupers

The Queen’s Zebra has been stolen. But why?

At the threshold of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment has taken 18th century Paris by storm. The Palais Royal has become the hub of free thought and freer behaviour. A whirlwind of passionate debates unfolds in the city’s new cafés, with a flourishing of theatre, satire, and opera.

George Du Paon, still mourning his beloved twin sister, has a famous taxidermy workshop near the Seine. As his close friend Nicolas guides him through the libertarian and libertine revolution of the time, George becomes entrusted with the Queen of England’s favourite deceased zebra.

George and his young protégée, Jeanne, are delighted at the prospect of breathing life back into the unusual specimen while pondering how to capture the essence of its nature. Among the questions being debated at the Académie des Sciences is why both the horse and the ass can be tamed, but the zebra cannot. And so the discussion evolves: What parts of the zebra make it so unique? Is it more than the sum of its parts? Are men separate from women? Is a garden part of nature?

George is surrounded by a cast of figures, ranging from the formidable Mme de Staël, Ambassador Thomas Jefferson, the transvestite general Chevalier d’Éon, and the immensely popular womanizer Benjamin Franklin. As intriguing questions about the human spirit, reductionism, social class, injustice, and the gap between science and religion swirl and set the stage, fiction, history, and philosophy intermingle. Just as George's feelings for his assistant deepen, the zebra suddenly vanishes . . .

Roland Kupers is the author of several books on complex systems, a sculptor, and an advisor to the United Nations on climate policy.

Dr. Roland Kupers is an author and an advisor on Complexity, Resilience, and Energy Transition. He is the Lead Architect of UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, and a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.

A theoretical physicist by training, Roland spent a decade each at AT&T and at Shell in various senior executive functions, including group head for Sustainable Development and Vice President Global LNG. He has a long-running interest in complexity theory and its impacts.

He has published widely, including in Harvard Business Review, on Project Syndicate, etc. His books include Hester van Eeghen—A World of Bags (nai010 2024) and A Climate Policy Revolution: What the Science of Complexity Reveals about Saving the Planet (Harvard University Press 2020). He has coauthored Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society's Problems from the Bottom Up (Princeton University Press 2014), The Essence of Scenarios (Amsterdam University Press 2014), and Turbulence: A Corporate Framing of Resilience (Amsterdam University Press 2014).

In 2010 Roland was a coauthor of a report commissioned by the German government on a New Growth Path for Europe, applying a complexity lens to climate economics. He has been an advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Roland is a Dutch national; his travels have made him fluent in five languages.