Great Apes was published by Bloomsbury in 1997. Simon Dykes, a successful London painter, wakes after a night of heavy drinking to find that the world has changed: all humans are now chimpanzees, and he appears to be the only one who remembers being human. Or rather — in this world, humans never existed. Chimpanzees evolved intelligence, built civilization, and now run everything exactly as humans do: they have art galleries, psychiatrists, universities, tabloid newspapers. Actual humans are mute animals kept in zoos.
Simon is diagnosed as psychotic and placed under the care of Dr. Zack Busner (a recurring Self character — psychiatrist, media personality, well-meaning buffoon). Busner treats Simon’s “delusion” that he was once human, while Simon struggles with the physical reality of being a chimpanzee in a chimpanzee world: the grooming rituals, the dominance hierarchies expressed through bared teeth and presented rumps, the casual violence, the hypersexuality.
The joke — sustained across 400 pages with extraordinary discipline — is that chimpanzee society, described with scrupulous ethological accuracy, is indistinguishable from human society once you adjust for anatomy. Self’s point is Swiftian: strip away the mythology of human exceptionalism, and what remains is primate social behavior dressed up in art and philosophy. The novel never breaks character — every human convention is rendered in chimpanzee terms (handshakes become back-pats, smiles become submission grimaces, sex is public and promiscuous) and the effect is both hilarious and deeply unsettling.
Collecting Great Apes
First edition (Bloomsbury, London, 1997): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Very good: $15–$30