When he gets to the address given he is taken aback by who or what the teacher in the add is. It is a West African gorilla, Ishmael. The man is even more taken aback when the gorilla starts communicating with him, not actually talking but somehow relating his thoughts.
Over several weeks, the two talk about humanity, the creation myth, Genesis, different peoples and human supremacy. The premise is for the man to talk about how humanity came to be the way it is. That is really all it is. The man and the gorilla talking.
Until one day, after having missed a few sessions, the man comes to the usual meeting place and finds the gorilla gone. After making several phone calls he finds him again with a traveling circus. For the remainder of the sessions, the man now visits him there, sitting in front of the cage.
After the come to the point when Ishmael tells the man to do what he has been doing with the man - teach students in the same way, by talking and making them reach the conclusions themselves. Then Ishmael tells them that he is done with the man. While the man tries to scrape together the money to buy the gorilla from the circus, the animal dies from pneumonia.
This is not as out there as it sounds and a surprisingly fluent read.
7/10
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