Roger's World
Charles Siebert
'Siebert brings to the subject not just scientific knowledge and empathy but a philosophical bent and a quirky, original way with words … the result is a journey unlike any other, and well worth taking.'
Fiona Capp ('Pick of the Week', The Age)'Simply amazing. Siebert is our most inventive and eloquent writer on the subject of the natural world, and Roger's World is his masterpiece: provocative, witty, deeply moving, and above all essential.'
Alan Burdick, author of Out of Eden'Equal parts fascinating and disturbing, Roger's World goes beyond the regular oohing and aahing of nature docos into the hows and whys of animal behaviour.'
(frankie magazine)Roger’s World unfolds over the course of Charles Siebert’s last night with Roger, a chimpanzee in a Florida retirement home for former ape entertainers: stars of the big screen, TV, and Big Top circuses. Of the 46 retirees at this facility, Roger, a 28-year-old former Ringling Brothers entertainer, is the only one who still lives alone. Born in captivity, and raised all his life around human beings, he still prefers human company to that of his fellow chimps.
Charles and Roger sit together, a chimpanzee and a man, two beings separated by no more than some metal bars and a few strands of DNA; each of them trying, in a sense, to get past himself in order to get at the other’s essence.
Within this account, Siebert tells a larger story: the tales of his travels in Africa — where he encountered, among other things, elephants sufferring from a collective nervous breakdown, and some of the last remaining chimps in the wild — and his travels in the U.S. through the dark heart of captive chimpdom at a moment in history when the number of chimps in the wilderness is rapidly declining, even as those in captivity continues to rise.
In the end, Siebert’s vigil with Roger leads to a number of moving revelations — not only about Roger and himself, but also about the fraught moment that we humans have arrived at in our relationship with the animal world. Roger’s World suggests a new way for human beings to see our fellow creatures, and to see ourselves in relation to them.
'While writing a story about chimps for The New York Times Magazine, Siebert was visiting sanctuaries established for former ape actors and research animals when he came to a facility in Wauchula, Florida. As soon as chimpanzee Roger saw him, he stood up and gave three loud, slow claps, causing the caregivers to comment on the immediate recognition. Siebert asked to stay and visit with Roger, wondering at this connection with an animal he’d never met, and the result is this elegiac meditation on the bond between human and ape, centered on one night that the author spent with Roger as he and the chimp sit and commune through looks and body language. This leads the author delving into our treatment of nonhuman animals and finding the connection that he and Roger both sought.'
(Booklist)Charles Siebert
Author photo
Mashid Mohadjerin
Charles Siebert's essays, articles and poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Men's Journal, and Outside. He is the author of three other books, Wickerby: an urban pastoral, a New York Times notable book, Angus: a novel, and A Man After His Own Heart.
Buy from Readings
Extent: 224pp
Size: 234mm x 153mm
ISBN (13): 9781921372865
RRP: $29.95
Pub date: July 2009
ANZ, South Africa, South-East Asia
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