The Man Among the Monkeys; Or, Ninety Days in Apeland: To Which Are Added: The Philosopher and His Monkeys, the Professor and the Crocodile, and Other Strange Stories of Men and Animals

What begins as a darkly comic tale of one man's disastrous relationship with primates spirals into something stranger: a survival story where the beasts may be more rational than the humans. Polydorus Marasquin inherits his father's exotic animal trade and a grudge: a baboon he wronged later burns down his menagerie, killing his mother. Fleeing to Oceania, he washes up on an island teeming with apes who promptly siege his makeshift camp. But the true comedy lies in Gozlan's gleeful inversion of the natural order, these monkeys are organized, vindictive, and perhaps even more civilized than the "civilized" man among them. Written with the manic energy of a Parisian boulevard comedy, this is adventure fiction that refuses to take itself seriously, while quietly asking whether humanity's claim to superiority over the beasts is anything more than vanity.