Abstract:

German-Panamanian-Chinese-American writer Sigrid Nunez’s seventh book The Friend (2018) is a hybrid narrative, a composite of memoir, meditation, novel, fiction and metafiction, on human and non-human animal companionship. It amalgamates issues that have become trademarks of Nunez’s fiction such as loss and grief with the companionship of non-human animals and humans. The book thematically blurs the boundaries between humans and non-human animals and fundamentally challenges and questions Western ways of thinking about human-animal dualistic hierarchy, according to which animals are associated with instincts rather than reason, with teh body rather than the mind, and with nature rather than culture. While the human world the novel presents is filled with vile gossip, competition, senseless brutality and bloodshed, the animals set an example of loyalty and friendship; with their superior mental and bodily capacities, animals in The Friend are portrayed, rather than dumb creatures, as wise kin of humans still persisting in goodness though wrongfully exiled from human privileges. Thus in her intricately knitted narrative, Nunez offers the companionship of non-human animals as the only saving grace in human life.

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