Penguin, 1998, softcover, 404 pages, condition: as new.
After a night of routine debauchery in London's clubland, the artist Simon Dykes falls asleep - only to wake up to find his girlfriend has been transmogrified into a chimp. Indeed the whole of London, though functioning normally, is run and inhabited by chimps. Can the great chimp-doctor, Zack Busner, cure him of his illusion that he's human? A wonderfully funny and clever novel that manages too to evoke great feelings of pity and sadness in the reader, this is in effect a meditation on how we treat animals.
Like Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Great Apes is a strange and twisted tale, a surreal satire on the human condition, and an omen for those who wander too far. After a long night of partying, Simon Dykes, a successful British painter, wakes up to find that his girlfriend has turned into a chimpanzee. In fact, the world Simon once knew has become a planet of apes. Convinced he is still human, Simon is confined to the emergency ward of a hospital and put under the care of Dr. Zack Busner, clinical psychologist, radical psychoanalyst, maverick drug researcher and media personality. Written with the glittering satiric edge that is Self's hallmark, Great Apes is a hilarious, disturbing, and truly unforgettable novel.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Yea r
Editor's Choice "Best Books of the year" Booklist
One of the Year's best novels Time Out
"Swiftian tartness, Kafkaesque transformation and full tilt Monty Python-style surrealism propel [Great Apes], a hilarious, unusually discomfiting exploration of what it means to be human." The Seattle Times
"A high-powered satirical weapon . . . with Great Apes, his most satisfying book so far, Will Self establishes himself as an alpha male in the British literary hierarchy." The New York Times Book Review
"A fur-flying satire of Swiftian proportions."-Vanity Fair
"What makes [Great Apes] work is an inventive prose of vigorous verbs, high-tech terms, odd juxtapositions and a manic sensibility eager to wallow where others fear to tread." Newsday
Will Self is the author of Cock & Bull, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, My Idea of Fun, and Grey Area.
