HACKENFELLER'S APE by Brigid Brophy

For the past few years, the fine folk at Faber have been deep diving in their archives for (mostly) out of print, (mostly) forgotten masterpieces and giving them a new lease on life as Faber Editions. I’ll never know why these particular books - almost all novellas - fell from the greater reading consciousness because, without fail, they’ve been great. Hackenfeller’s Ape is no exception.

Delightfully loopy Professer Darrylhyde sits at the London Zoo singing to its captive apes, Percy and Edwina, hoping to encourage them to mate. When he learns that Percy is set to be sent into space, he hatches a scheme to help the ill-fated primate escape. Needless to say, what follows is a disaster of hilarious proportions. But this is no Marx Brothers caper. Brophy, one of England’s most revered literary activists, writes with passion and ferocity about animal rights, the idiocy of the space race and the rather precarious trajectory of our planet and its inhabitants. Equal parts satire and polemic, Hackenfeller’s Ape remains just as urgent and relevant today as it was back in 1953.

Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy
Faber Edition, 2024 (First Pub 1953)
144 pages