Daniel Quinn

The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned  office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling  delicately on a slender branch. "You are the  teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am  the teacher," the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story  to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and  forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save.  Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the  lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to  come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny  to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him-- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?