Book Description: General FictionLarge Print EditionHoeg is an adventurous and intelligent writer whose future course seems happily, impossible to predict . . . one of the essential contemporary novelists. starred, Kirkus ReviewsNo imaginative writer today is more daring than Danish novelist Peter Hoeg. starred, Booklist* A Literary Guild Main SelectionAn hour after nightfall the ape rose, wrapped an arm around Madelene, parted the screen of leaves at a shadowed spot, and leaped, almost horizontally, into what seemed to Madelene to be a pitch-black void. Madelene Burden is a Danish beauty who lives in an alcoholic haze while her husband, Adam, a behavioral scientist, dreams of restoring the London Zoo to its original glory. Hes about to get his chance with Erasmus, a 300-pound gorilla unlike any other. But a spark ignites between Madelene and Erasmus and begins a love affair as emotionally and erotically charged as any male-female relationship can be and a revelation that stuns the world.