Riddley Walker - Hardcover

Hoban, Russell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671421476 ISBN 13: 9780671421472

Publisher: Summit Books, 1980

Synopsis

"A hero with Huck Finn's heart and charm, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy.... Riddley Walker is haunting and fiercely imagined and—this matters most—intensely ponderable." —Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review

"This is what literature is meant to be." —Anthony Burgess

"Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and style.... The conviction and consistency are total. Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece." —Anthony Thwaite, Observer

"Extraordinary... Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel that people will be reading for a long, long time." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"Stunning, delicious, designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid." —John Leonard, The New York Times

"Highly enjoyable... An intriguing plot... Ferociously inventive." —Walter Clemons, Newsweek

"Astounding... Hoban's soaring flight of imagination is that golden rarity, a dazzlingly realized work of genius." —Jane Clapperton, Cosmopolitan

"An imaginative intensity that is rare in contemporary fiction.' —Paul Gray, Time

Riddley Walker is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist. Read again or for the first time this masterpiece of 20th-century literature with new material by the author.

About this title

About the Author:

Russell Hoban is the author of many extraordinary novels including ANGELICA'S GROTTO, also available from Bloomsbury. He has also written some classic books for children including THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD and THE FRANCES books. He lives in London.

Review:

'The book has an evangelical effect on people ... Riddley is an absorbing character, Hoban's language has a fantastic, rough poetry and the post-apocalyptic world is chilling and convincing' Rachel Seiffert, Observer 'Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and of style ... funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Summit Books
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0671421476
• ISBN 13: 9780671421472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220