Nora, The Ape-Woman

Felicien Champsaur’s Nora, The Ape-Woman (1929) is a sequel to both Homo-Deus and Ouha, King of the Apes. Nora is the story of two hybrids: a beautiful dancer sired by an orangutan and a human scientist, further humanized by surgery, and the son of a native woman and the part-human orangutan Ouha, King of the Apes. It is concerned with evolutionary history and the true nature of the simian and human species; it deals with the scientific modification of such species by means of surgery, thus enhancing the human condition, ultimately leading to the creation of supermen and the conquest of death. Despite various critical claims, Nora refuses to be racist and proudly claims that supposedly civilized white men are not superior to other races, or even species. It is a story of the triumph of animality, and argues that such triumph is not something of which we should be ashamed.