Last year for this project I read Brigid Brophy’s The Snow Ball, which made me keen to read more. Hackenfeller’s Ape (1953) was her debut novel and already demonstrates what an accomplished stylist and storyteller she was.

Professor Clement Darrelhyde is at London Zoo watching two Hackenfeller’s apes, Percy and Edwina. The apes are thought to be the closest to humans, and Brophy draws her parallels with a light comic touch.

“In captivity it moved on all fours; but in the jungle, as Hackenfeller had noted, it ran erect with its hands holding onto branches overhead. Children sometimes used a similar method when they learn to walk, but in the adult man it was forgotten until he had to relearn it in crowded buses and trains.”

Both the Professor and Edwina hope for a mating to occur, but Percy is not obliging, despite the Professor’s ritual of singing Mozart to them.

“Here was an animal discontent with his monkeydom, already exercising the first characteristic of Man, which Man had never satisfactorily explained, self-restraint.”

Very quickly we learn that the Professor is under time pressure. An arrogant young researcher named Kendrick wants to send Percy to space in a rocket. The Professor is outraged, disparagingly drawing parallels in his mind between Kendrick and Rossini! He has only a few days to try and rescue Percy (although, keeping him in a cage is an odd kind of rescue).

“He looked like a scholastic grasshopper, crossing Regent’s Park and shattering its pastoral calm.”

The Professor undertakes interviews of comic misunderstanding with a journalist, and the inappropriately named Colonel Hunter at the League for the Prevention of Unkind Practises to Animals. Brophy has great fun satirising the press bias and well-meaning inactivity of organisations.

Eventually the Professor is aided by Gloria, a young pickpocket and burglar who, having been in prison, is up for setting Percy free.

But what does Percy want? Brophy takes us inside his mind in a way that works perfectly. It never seems clunky or whimsical, and she never sentimentalises Percy. I particularly enjoyed this reflection of his:

“Physically, he was exhausted. The Professor had not let him have his sleep out; and that at first seemed typical of the Professor’s nattering officiousness.”

The Professor and Gloria seemed doomed to failure and I couldn’t work out how Brophy would end this tale, but it is surprising and sensational, and she carries it off with aplomb.

I should warn readers there are some upsetting moments with the animals, but these are sentences not scenes. Brophy was a leading campaigner for animal rights and she knows how to make her points without didacticism or horror.

This really is an astonishing novel, finely balancing serious issues with comedy, philosophy with outright silliness.

Hackenfeller’s Ape has been reissued by Faber as one of their wonderful Editions series. More than 70 years after it was written, I’m sure it will resonate with a new generation of readers.