From survivor of genocide to conservation hero: A moving, heartwarming
memoir about a real-life chimpanzee whisperer--now the subject of the
award-winning documentary film Pant Hoot.
Stany Nyandwi's gift for communicating with chimpanzees is so special
that world-renowned primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall has called him a
"chimpanzee whisperer." His skills and devotion to these creatures--our
closest living relatives, with whom we share 98.7 percent of our
DNA--have earned him international awards and sent him on travels within
Africa and around the world. But he began life in poverty, born and
raised in a dirt-floor, straw-roofed hut in rural Burundi. The
Chimpanzee Whisperer is the story of his astonishing life journey.
It is also an African story. Receiving only an elementary education
before he quit school, he suffered injustice and tragic loss because of
his ethnic group. He began caring for orphaned and rescued chimps in
Burundi. When the country descended into civil war and genocide, he was
forced to flee with the chimps and endured long separation from his
family. Continuing to work with and learn about chimpanzees in Kenya,
Uganda, and later South Africa, he made himself into an incomparable
authority.
His memoir has adventure, danger, and many unique and touching stories
about chimpanzees that show his bond with and understanding of them. As
told to award-winning author David Blissett, it reveals a remarkable man
who has refused to let circumstances defeat him. Conditioned by hate,
wounded by loss, he has lived for love, faith, and compassion, giving
new life, as Dr. Jane Goodall writes in her foreword, "to so many
chimpanzees whose families, like his own, were torn apart by violence."
