The Forbidden Experiment The S
Language: English
Published by NYRB Classics, 2025
- Softcover
- Used

Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books (was SecondSale)
AbeBooks seller since December 20, 2007
Condition: Used - As new
£ 4.27
Quantity: 11 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Seller Inventory # 00096270913
- Title
- The Forbidden Experiment The S
- Author
- Shattuck, Roger
- Publisher
- NYRB Classics
- Publication year
- 2025
- Condition
- Like New
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1681379775
- ISBN 13
- 9781681379777
So begins Roger Shattuck’s book about the Wild Boy of Aveyron—a child tragically abandoned by his caretakers and captured years later while scavenging food from a local garden. The Wild Boy could not speak, refused all clothing, and repeatedly tried to escape from captivity. Sent to the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris and declared a hopeless case, he was left to run wild until, one day, a medical student arrived on the scene.
Jean Itard, young and from the provinces, began spending time with the boy and imagining ways to help him. He hired a woman named Guérin to care for him and gradually introduced him to social interaction, engaging his senses and imagination with games, toys, and other forms of training. For a while Victor (as Itard named him) made progress, but by 1805 their sessions together had reached an impasse. Victor died in obscurity, still cared for by Madame Guérin, in 1828.
The Forbidden Experiment tells the story of a troubled young man and the extraordinary doctor who tried, however imperfectly, to help him. It is also, in Shattuck’s thoughtful, accessible, and compassionate prose, a book that explores essential questions about the human condition. What separates us from animals? What is language, and how do we acquire it? Can children who have been neglected or abused learn to trust the world?
First published in 1980—and inspired by François Truffaut’s film The Wild Child—The Forbidden Experiment is now back in print for the first time in more than a decade.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jed Perl is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His books include Paris Without End, New Art City, Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, a two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, and, most recently, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts. Perl was a contributing editor at Vogue for a decade and the art critic at The New Republic for twenty years.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
World of Books (was SecondSale)
Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since December 20, 2007
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