Copyright © 2015 by King Baby, Inc.

Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Natalya Balnova

The right of King Baby, Inc. to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

This Ebook edition was first published by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 2589 4

Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral

Jacket illustration and lettering by Natalya Balnova / Marlena Agency

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

An Hachette UK Company

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www.headline.co.uk

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About David Duchovny

Praise for David Duchovny

About the Book

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1: Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Chapter 2: A Dairy Tale

Chapter 3: The Event (Actually, the Pre-Event)

Chapter 4: The Open Gate

Chapter 5: Outside the Gate

Chapter 6: Go-Time

Chapter 7: Bulls#@T!!!

Chapter 8: Off the Beaten Path

Chapter 9: The Box God

Chapter 10: I Awake

Chapter 11: The Birds and the Bees (in screenplay form)

Chapter 12: Uncomfortably Numb (see Floyd, Pink)

Chapter 13: The Black Dog

Chapter 14: Mom

Chapter 15: An Apology

Chapter 16: Freeish Bird (see Skynyrd, Lynyrd)

Chapter 17: A Whole New World (see Aladdin)

Chapter 18: India

Chapter 19: Operation India

Chapter 20: Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You (see Zeppelin, Led)

Chapter 21: Let’s Go: Turkey

Chapter 22: A Moment

Chapter 23: It’s Hard to Leave Anywhere

Chapter 24: Headline: Cow Jumps Over Moon (followed by a pig and a turkey)

Chapter 25: You Had Me At Shalom

Chapter 26: Country Cow, City Cow

Chapter 27: Kosher Korner

Chapter 28: The First Cut is the Deepest (see Stevens, Cat)

Chapter 29: Just a Little off the Top

Chapter 30: Fly Like an Eagle, or a Squirrel

Chapter 31: A Terminal Case

Chapter 32: Dog Bites Pig

Chapter 33: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Chapter 34: Flightless Bird Takes Flight

Chapter 35: Istanbul is Constantinople

Chapter 36: Turkey in, Turkey Out

Chapter 37: Up, Up, and no Way

Chapter 38: Today’s In-Flight Entertainment

Chapter 39: A Pig in the Promised Land

Chapter 40: Another Brick in the Wall

Chapter 41: And did Those (Pig’s) Feet . . . (see Blake, William)

Chapter 42: Nobel Camel

Chapter 43: Mohammed’s Radio (see Zevon, Warren)

Chapter 44: Mumbai, Mon Amour

Chapter 45: Singh a Simple Song

Chapter 46: The Chowpatty Goddess

Chapter 47: Coming Home

Chapter 48: How Now, Brown Cow?

A Note from the Cow-Writer

Acknowledgments

About the Author

David Duchovny is a television, stage and screen actor, as well as a screenwriter and director.

Acclaim for David Duchovny:

‘David Duchovny is a very smart and wryly entertaining actor, and now, novelist. Although I will never publicly admit to jealousy, I am having him killed’ Rob Lowe

‘This is the best cow-based theological odyssey of all time. A hybrid of Joyce’s Ulysses and beef. Elsie Bovary is a modern day Damona’ Craig Ferguson

‘David Duchovny’s witty invention of the charming, brave and smart-mouthed Elsie Bovary guarantees that his Swiftian fable about a cow, a pig and a turkey’s hilarious and moving farm-break to save themselves from the cruelty of human consumption is a literary feast no reader can resist’ Rafael Yglesias, author of A Happy Marriage

About the Book

Elsie Bovary is a cow and a pretty happy one at that. Until one night, Elsie sneaks out of the pasture and finds herself drawn to the farmhouse. Through the window, she sees the farmer’s family gathered around a bright Box God – and what the Box God reveals about something called an ‘industrial meat farm’ shakes Elsie’s understanding of her world to its core.

The only solution? To escape to a better, safer world. And so a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Shalom, a grumpy pig who’s recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave turkey who can’t fly, but can work an iPhone with his beak. Toting stolen passports and slapdash human disguises, they head for the airport . . .

Elsie is a wise-cracking, slyly witty narrator; Tom dispenses psychiatric advice in a fake German accent; and Shalom ends up unexpectedly uniting Israelis and Palestinians. David Duchovny’s charismatic creatures point the way toward a mutual understanding and acceptance the world desperately needs.