Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The fairgrounds are teeming with apes, elephants and wolves.

There are hedgehogs from China, bonobos from the Congo, and even a psychic tabby from Rhode Island. This isn't what I expected to find at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

You'd think that the estimated 286,600 bibliophiles drawn to this orgy of some 391,600 books spread across several floors in six halls would be preoccupied with high literary discourse. Doris Lessing, after all, just won the Nobel Prize in Literature; the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be awarded next week.

Yet here under the shadow of the MesseTurm, a 1990s skyscraper with an Art Deco air, the buzz has been mostly about books featuring beasts.

One hot property is Joseph Smith's ``The Wolf,'' a lean, mysterious novel sold in a pre-emptive bid a week before the fair opened by uber-agent Peter Straus of London literary agency Rogers, Coleridge & White, to publishers in the U.K, Brazil, Spain and the Netherlands.

The book is narrated by a wolf in his last days -- a very hungry wolf desperately hunting for food. ``It is neither sentimental nor self-indulgent but perfectly poised,'' said Straus. ``It features encounters with foxes and swans and man.''

Then there's the novel about an 18th-century English stable boy and his unlikely love object, an elephant named Jenny. Snapped up by editors in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands, Christopher Nicholson's ``The Elephant Keeper'' is billed as a poignant book with potential to be both a critical and sales success.

Martel, Gruen

``Considering ourselves via other living creatures -- whether in relationship to them, or from their point of view -- offers us a fresh perspective on the world and our lives,'' said Nicholson's agent, Isobel Dixon of the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency.

Publishers are notorious copycats, and much of this sudden interest in animals was stoked by two surprise bestsellers, Yann Martel's 2001 tale of a boy on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, ``Life of Pi,'' and Sara Gruen's current hit, ``Water for Elephants,'' the story of a young man's attempt to save a circus pachyderm during the Depression.

Gruen herself has turned her attention to bonobos for her next novel, ``Ape House,'' which depicts a bonobo family that ends up on a reality TV show. Agent Emma Sweeney snagged Gruen a two-book, seven-figure deal on the basis of a 12-page outline.

Tomcat of Death

Emma Sweeney Agency of New York is also representing David Dosa, a geriatrician who has written a book about Oscar. The Rhode Island nursing-home tomcat made headlines this year after the doctor observed in the New England Journal of Medicine that Oscar had a knack for knowing when a patient was about to die. (When Oscar curls up next to a bedridden patient, the grim reaper invariably arrives within two to four hours, Dosa says.)

In ``We Bought a Zoo,'' Guardian journalist Benjamin Mee describes his fight to save England's Dartmoor Wildlife Park and its 200 animals at a time when his wife had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The U.K. arm of News Corp.'s HarperCollins triumphed in a heated auction to snap up British Commonwealth rights, and plans for a BBC television series are in place.

``It's a popular, commercial autobiography with a cast of 200 animals, including three huge bears,'' said Mee's agent, Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh Ltd., sitting at his paper- strewn desk in the agents' center during a five-minute break between meetings.

Tiger Dentistry

``Running a zoo is very expensive, but we closed a U.S. deal for the book last night with Weinstein Books, and have also made Canadian, German and Dutch deals during the fair,'' Walsh said. ``So those tigers' dentistry bills will be paid.''

Earlier this year, Walsh struck U.S. and U.K. deals for ``Hugh's Hedgehog,'' which tracks author Hugh Warwick's obsessive hunt for insectivores in China's Shaanxi Province.

And then there's Garth Stein's latest novel, ``The Art of Racing in the Rain,'' which is narrated by Enzo, a mutt with a lot on his mind. Enzo belongs to a disintegrating young family that he's determined to hold together in the face of illness, death and a bitter custody battle. HarperCollins paid $1.2 million for the book in July.

Agent Clare Conville of Conville & Walsh is on the lookout for a canine misery memoir. One promising subject is Violet, a ``three-legged lurcher'' who won the fastest dog race at a village fete in Suffolk, England. Now all Conville needs, she says, is a dog whisperer to ghost the story out of Violet.

(Hephzibah Anderson is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Hephzibah Anderson at hephzibah_anderson@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: October 12, 2007 10:29 EDT