El zoo de vidre és el retrat d’una família del sud dels Estats Units de 1930, que travessa l’abisme que s’obre entre les esperances de futur i les crues possibilitats reals. En el petit pis dels Wingfield, Amanda malva per assegurar el que per ella seria un futur millor per als seus dos fills adults, Tom i Laura, mentre arrossega la frustració d’haver estat abandonada pel seu marit.

Tom, que actua també com a narrador de la història, és un jove poeta que treballa en un magatzem per sostenir la família, però desitja viure aventures i escapar de la sobreprotecció de la seva sufocant mare. Laura és la germana petita, una noia tímida i tancada en si mateixa i les seves figuretes de vidre, a qui la seva coixesa suposa una gran xacra per relacionar-se amb el món exterior i donar sortida a les seves il·lusions romàntiques. El gran cop de realitat començarà quan Amanda decideixi empènyer-se a buscar un pretendent per a Laura i evitar, així, que els seus dos fills pateixin el que ella ha hagut de viure.

Eitan is a young Jewish German who lives in New York and studies human DNA. He knows Wahida, a young Arab who is making her thesis about a 16th-century humanist sage who converted from Islam to Christianity by obligation. Both fall in love, forcing Eitan to confront his family and confront his fundamentalist religious beliefs. But when the two young men travel to Israel and the West Bank, Eitan is caught by a terrorist attack on the Allenby border bridge which will leave him in a deep coma. This will force his family to travel from Germany to Tel Aviv, where they will discover their family past, in a mixture of beliefs, religion, human DNA and chance.

They will all be forced to cross the painful border between family love and hatred of prejudice, where the violence of the outside world overflies domestic life and where generations break apart when the past overflows the present.

Eitan is a young Jewish German who lives in New York and studies human DNA. He knows Wahida, a young Arab who is making her thesis about a 16th-century humanist sage who converted from Islam to Christianity by obligation. Both fall in love, forcing Eitan to confront his family and confront his fundamentalist religious beliefs. But when the two young men travel to Israel and the West Bank, Eitan is caught by a terrorist attack on the Allenby border bridge which will leave him in a deep coma. This will force his family to travel from Germany to Tel Aviv, where they will discover their family past, in a mixture of beliefs, religion, human DNA and chance.

They will all be forced to cross the painful border between family love and hatred of prejudice, where the violence of the outside world overflies domestic life and where generations break apart when the past overflows the present.