Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!
Today's spotlight shines on Ori Gersht and their recently released novel Ham's Heaven.
On how Ori Gersht, a world-renowned photographer, came to write Ham’s Heaven
A writer I had collaborated with on a VR
project encouraged me to write a short biographical story each day—about
whatever happened to come to mind. One morning, I came across a story
about apes sent into space. It was a strange tidbit from history, but I
became interested in soon researched more about this strange chapter
in space exploration. I found myself delving into the astonishing
real-life account of the NASA program’s first chimpanzee astronaut. The further
I researched, and since the whole process started as a creative writing prompt,
the more I became convinced that only fiction could capture the emotional depth
and ethical complexity of this story. So I invented Bradley, a young man,
partly incorporating some of my own childhood memories but a fictional
character on the whole, who is charged with the care and training of the
chimpanzee. The story then grew on its own, and became an account of the deep
bond between a human and an animal, where the human is charged to take care of
the animal that is really being exploited by other humans for their
plans. In some way, Bradley’s and Ham’s relationship is also a story about
free will and destiny—about two beings caught in the storm of human ambition
for progress.
My work as a photographer has always been
rooted in careful preparation and in seeking, through meticulous slowness and
attention, something that lies just beyond what the world offers readily to
our eyes. In writing this novel, I found a similar discipline is
required—a patience and honesty to search for something like the truth that
even the best factual account cannot capture. This book became a meditation on
the costs of progress, the blurred line between human wonder and the equally
strong pull of hubris and ambition, often for its own sake, and the ways we
often sacrifice other ways of being in the world (here in the figure of a
remarkable intelligent, intuitive and feeling animal) for the sake of our own
imagined or real advancement.
At its core, the novel wants to put in front
of readers the question of how we remember or ignore those we elevate only
to cast them aside when their usefulness is spent. Writing the book has made me
becoming more mindful of struggles for animal rights, and how those debates are
often strange inflections of other ethical dilemmas we face in our interhuman
struggles. I also wanted to come close to letting the reader feel what Ham may
have felt, without overstepping the line and thinking I can know and represent
an animal's experience. In this way, perhaps the book is a bit like my
images: through meticulous,
imaginative depictions of Ham’s training, space flight, and consequential
destiny, I try to lead readers
to the edge of what they can normally see—to make them realize that the world
is far more mysterious, in both beautiful and troubling ways, than we usually
assume.
“A taut,
well-written tale of the tragic, innocent victims of technological
advancement.”
—Kirkus
Reviews
“An
extraordinarily intense debut novel. Its subject matter—the true story of the
‘training’ forced on chimpanzees to become astronauts—is all the more deeply
affecting for the matter-of-fact tone of its telling. This is fiction that
vividly documents a pivotal moment in the history of primates—the history of
humans as well as of chimpanzees. It deserves a wide audience.”
—Don
LePan, author of Animals and Lucy and Bonbon
Before
Armstrong took his first step, another pioneer blazed toward the stars: Ham, a
young chimpanzee seized from the forests of Cameroon and trained by his devoted
handler, Bradley. As the U.S. space program races toward the future, their
extraordinary bond is tested in perilous experiments, culminating in Ham’s
harrowing journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere. He becomes a living symbol of
human ambition, and its staggering cost. Finally, Bradley must acknowledge the
limits of compassion and takes drastic action. Inspired by real events, Ham’s
Heaven is a deeply moving exploration of friendship, sacrifice, and the
uneasy alliance between man and animal. Named one of the best books of 2024 by Ha’aretz
and best debut fiction by the radio show Under Cover, Ham’s Heaven is a
testament to the bonds that define us—and the quest for progress that so often
divides us.
Ori Gersht is an internationally acclaimed artist known for his innovative photography and video works. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, he has served as Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, England. His work is in major collections, including the New York Guggenheim; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tate, London.
JOANNA CHEN translated Ham's Heaven. She is a British-born writer and literary translator from Hebrew to English whose translations include Agi Mishol’s Less Like a Dove, Yonatan Berg’s Frayed Light (finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards), and Meir Shalev’s My Wild Garden.
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