‘I’m not deaf, but I’ve always felt more at home in Sign. Both my parents are deaf. Deaf as posts. Deaf as adders, deaf as beetles. And proud as peacocks, Deaf Pride long before there was a word, or a sign, for it. I learnt to speak with my hands from birth; there was no other way of reaching my parents…’

J.J. is back living at home in Adelaide, unemployed and drifting after a messy divorce. Then he is offered a job teaching Sign to Eliza. His new pupil is smart, sensitive, attractive—and a gorilla recently liberated from a medical research laboratory by animal rights activists. 

First published in 1995, the third novel by the acclaimed writer Peter Goldsworthy is unique in Australian literature: a dazzling, moving story about scientific experimentation and ethics, language and love. 

This edition comes with a new introduction by James Bradley.