Krank Fuss
Andrew Upton
Puncher & Wattmann
Krank Fuss, a novella by Australian playwright Andrew Upton who now lives in England, is an allegory in the mode of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the story is told through the voices of the animals on a farm.
The farm is in Bavaria, and the story is written in 1937 by a father to his unborn daughter, just as the Nazi regime is building momentum for another World War. Having fought for Germany in the First World War on the Western Front, the war-weary father was a committed pacifist.
At the centre of the fable is a lame chook, Krank Fuss, whose name translates as ‘sick foot’. Purchased along with five other young pullets, she is ostracised and bullied by the other chickens, and sent out to explore their new environment as a sacrifice to protect the rest of the flock.
Krank Fuss meets Gibby who decides to take her under their wing … even though they don’t have wings. “Gibboser Mung is both frog and toad, neither he nor she, at home on the land and at home in the water.”
Exploring the farm with the gendered-fluid frog-toad, Krank Fuss learns not to be so afraid of what she thought was a spider, but to be wary of crows and rats. Gibby’s advice is to pay attention to life and “more will happen to you that laying eggs and having your head chopped off”.
Enhanced by naive sketches, the charming fable about searching for meaning in life becomes a chaotic and violent story about the darker sides of animal-kind. This is certainly not a book for children. Krank Fuss becomes aware of the death and destruction that is part of farm life, and the reader sees parallels with war and the history that is being written today.
Lezly Herbert
