The Girl With No Name

Book excerpt: In 1954, in a remote mountain village in South America, a little girl was abducted. She was four years old. Marina Chapman was stolen from her housing estate and abandoned deep in the Colombian jungle. That she survived is a miracle. Two days later, half-drugged, terrified, and starving, she came upon a troop of capuchin monkeys. Acting entirely on instinct, she tried to do what they did: copying their actions she slowly learned to fend for herself. So begins the story of her five years among the monkeys, during which time she gradually became feral; lost the ability to speak, lost all inhibition, lost any sense of being human, replacing human society with the social mores her new simian family. But society was eventually to reclaim her. At age ten she was discovered by a pair of hunters who took her to the lawless Colombian city of Cucuta where, in exchange for a parrot, they sold her to a brothel. When she learned that she was to be groomed for prostitution, she made her plans to escape. But her adventure was not over yet... In the vein of Slumdog Millionaire and City of God, this rousing story of a lost child who overcomes the dangers of the wild to finally reclaim her life will astonish readers everywhere.