Overview

Memories from the Jungle is set in an unspecified future in which Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by pollution and war. Most humans live in orbital stations surrounding the globe, while only animals still survive on the African continent, along with a few scientists who study them in a kind of zoo and experimental laboratory. Doogie, a chimpanzee, has been raised as a human by a zoological researcher, Gardner Evans, and his daughter, Janet. Doogie is no ordinary chimpanzee: gifted with an exceptional intelligence (perhaps the result of a scientific experiment), he has been taught a fairly sophisticated version of the human language, is capable of human emotions such as love and jealousy, and has a highly developed understanding of human behavior. After an accident to the spacecraft that was bringing him back to Earth from an orbital station, Doogie finds himself alone in the jungle. In order to survive, he must rediscover the very animal nature he has been trained to reject.  

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9781496238535

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Reviews

“Embedded within this whimsical wild ride to a speculative future is a sendup of B. F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism. In Christopher Beach’s adept translation, Tristan Garcia’s language play brings across the sympathetic and humanlike chimpanzee Doogie and his quest for a middle ground between nature and nurture.”—Elizabeth Kadetsky, author of On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World “Writing in a style that is both precise and colorful, Tristan Garcia pursues his argument without falling into pontificating jargon, renewing in a playful mode a problem that goes back to Aristotle.”—Emilie Colombani, Technikart “An intelligent, original, and bold novel . . . and, ultimately, a very moving one, about the foundations of civilization, language, knowledge, and animality.”—Baptiste Liger, L’Express “A kind of Jungle Book, but in reverse. It’s the comic version of the world of men, as seen by the animals of tomorrow. It’s daring, it’s thoughtful, it’s incisive.”—Hubert Artus, Rolling Stone

“Embedded within this whimsical wild ride to a speculative future is a send-up of B. F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism. In Christopher Beach’s adept translation, Tristan Garcia’s language play brings across the sympathetic and humanlike chimpanzee Doogie and his quest for a middle ground between nature and nurture.”—Elizabeth Kadetsky, author of On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World “Writing in a style that is both precise and colorful, Tristan Garcia pursues his argument without falling into pontificating jargon, renewing in a playful mode a problem that goes back to Aristotle. It is well known: man is an ape to man, and vice versa.”—Emilie Colombani, Technikart   “An intelligent, original, and bold novel . . . and, ultimately, a very moving one, about the foundations of civilization, language, knowledge, and animality.”—Baptiste Liger, L’Express “A kind of Jungle Book, but in reverse. It’s the comic version of the world of men, as seen by the animals of tomorrow. It’s daring, it’s thoughtful, it’s incisive.”—Hubert Artus, Rolling Stone

“Embedded within this whimsical wild ride to a speculative future is a send-up of B. F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism. In Christopher Beach’s adept translation, Tristan Garcia’s language play brings across the sympathetic and humanlike chimpanzee Doogie and his quest for a middle ground between nature and nurture.”-Elizabeth Kadetsky, author of On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World “Writing in a style that is both precise and colorful, Tristan Garcia pursues his argument without falling into pontificating jargon, renewing in a playful mode a problem that goes back to Aristotle. It is well known: man is an ape to man, and vice versa.”-Emilie Colombani, Technikart   “An intelligent, original, and bold novel . . . and, ultimately, a very moving one, about the foundations of civilization, language, knowledge, and animality.”-Baptiste Liger, L’Express “A kind of Jungle Book, but in reverse. It’s the comic version of the world of men, as seen by the animals of tomorrow. It’s daring, it’s thoughtful, it’s incisive.”-Hubert Artus, Rolling Stone

Author Information

Tristan Garcia is a rising star of the French intellectual and literary world, having published several books of philosophy-including the influential Form and Object-as well as eight works of fiction. His first novel won the Prix de Flore and was translated into English as Hate: A Romance. Garcia is on the philosophy faculty at the Jean Moulin University, Lyon 3. Christopher Beach is the co-translator of Annie Ernaux’s Do What They Say or Else (Nebraska, 2022). He is an independent scholar, editor, and translator.  

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