Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban’s slim (c. 250 pp) novel is a unique futuristic dystopian science fiction political satire fantasy about the re-discovery of gunpowder in a post-nuclear Holocaust England, where disaster has regressed to the Stone Age.

I know no other book like it, and as a reading experience, it can’t be beaten. There are discoveries on every page. Its characters are hunter-gatherers controlled by a shadow government of Punch and Judy puppeteers who are trying to promote another nuclear war. Its hero is Riddley Walker, a 12-year-old 22nd-century Huck Finn. Its hook is language as miscommunication.

The art of writing has… show more.

There is nothing like Riddley Walker. No other book offers such a convincing and immersive portrait of another culture, another place, another time.

In this case, that place is Kent, England, but deep into the future, where a new culture and language have emerged after a long-forgotten nuclear war. Hoban asks readers to make an effort; you have to get your ear in for his expertly handled broken English, but the returns are enormous.

This novel is set a couple of millennia after the apocalyptic event in what is currently the English county of Kent. It is narrated by the title character in a form of pidgin English that’s difficult to come to grips with. It took me a few goes to get into this book, but am I glad I did.

Riddley’s narration employs phrases like ‘suching waytion’ (situation) and ‘catwl twis’ (catalyst). Neither prose nor dialogue are easy to understand at first, but the perseverant reader grows accustomed to the strangeness of the language. They find themselves so absorbed in the richness… show more.