This aptly titled novel might be Naomi Alderman’s strangest book yet – a work of fiction about a writer called Naomi Alderman who, after her mother’s death, discovers an odd new species in her parents’ garden. The first image ever taken of this creature is captured on a camera she set up in the garden for her father to watch the foxes. It is about the size of a badger and flat-faced, with a long trunk-like nose:
It was a mammal, going by the nipples, womb and ovaries. Its fur was thick, soft and waterproof. Its eyes were perhaps a little unusual, with a secondary inner eyelid whose purpose could not be determined. Its four feet were padded and it had three toes on each foot, each one with a long, sharp claw.
After the image is posted online, people decide to call it a ‘mimmoth’, as in a baby elephant or ‘mini mammoth’. Mimmoths soon start to proliferate in Britain and in areas where they appeared, it seems that the birth rate rises, without anyone being able to work out where they came from or why this happened.
