Apes Author Will Self picked up more publicity than he ever could have intentionally orchestrated when he was fired from his position with The Observer , a British newspaper, for taking heroin while on John Major's campaign plane. Win some, lose some.
Dykes goes out boozing and debauching one night, and wakes up the next morning a chimpanzee.
Everyone is a chimpanzee, for that matter, and he is rapidly institutionalized for his delusion that he is a human. In Great Apes , Self pursues his favorite themes of distrust for psychiatrists and institutions, and dislike for human rituals, but he doesn't just propose a world of chimps as a backdrop for them. He pushes the land of chimp to the limit, changing the vocabulary to be more chimp-centric, keeping chimp hierarchies and social structures intact, and having chimp mating replace human relationships and intercourse. That aside, Self has a rare talent for blending satire and horror. Once the lengthy descriptions and the annoyance of repeated chimp grunts have passed, Great Apes is a thoroughly compelling book.