Letters to Mano. Orangutan at Berlin Zoo

Mano, an orangutan at Berlin Zoo, cannot receive letters. But that doesn't stop the narrator of this novel from writing to him – obsessively, tenderly and with increasing urgency. At first, the letters are inquiries about Mano's life, his origins, the question of his name and his genealogy. But from letter to letter, another thought comes to the fore: how can Mano be freed? Or is it actually the narrator who needs to be freed? What begins as a poetic reflection on captivity and otherness becomes a feverish obsession in which the boundaries between empathy and projection, between reason and madness become blurred. The narrator becomes entangled in legal and philosophical considerations, develops plans for liberation and seeks a means of reaching Mano through language. But Mano remains silent.

Letters to Mano is a haunting, stirring novel about the power of language, the longing for closeness and the impossibility of communication. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde subtly explores the abysses of our relationship with animals, with our otherness – and thus, not least, our relationship with ourselves.