When Alfred Fatigay returns to his native London, he brings along his trustworthy pet chimpanzee Emily who, unbeknownst to Fatigay, has become civilized: literate, literary--and in love with Fatigay himself. After Emily meets Alfred's fiancée Amy Flint, a 1920's "modern woman," she sets out to save her beloved from Amy's cold grip. "Emily is the perfect outside observer," writes Eva Brann in her introduction, "because she is an African in Europe, a female in a man's world, a servant to liberated sophisticates, and above all an old-fashioned creature in a modern world."