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 re