Riddley Walker
Riddley Walker is a science fiction novel by American writer Russell Hoban, first published in 1980. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel in 1982,[1] as well as an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983.[2] It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.[3]
Author
It is Hoban's best-known adult novel and a drastic departure from his other work, although he continued to explore some of the same themes in other settings.
Production[edit]
Hoban began work on the novel in 1974, inspired by the medieval wall painting of the legend of Saint Eustace at Canterbury Cathedral.[4]
Plot[edit]
Roughly two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated civilization, Riddley, the young narrator, stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon of the ancient world.
The novel's characters live a harsh life in a small area which is presently the English county of Kent, and know little of the world outside of "Inland" (England). Their level of civilization is similar to England's prehistoric Iron Age, although they do not produce their own iron but salvage it from ancient machinery. Church and state have combined into one secretive institution, whose mythology, based on misinterpreted stories of the war and an old Catholic saint (Eustace), is enacted in puppet shows.
One of the most notable features of the book is its unique dialect: an imagined, future version of the English language. This language blends puns, phonetic spelling, colloquialisms, and is influenced by the dialects of East Kent as Hoban heard them before 1980, where the events of the book are set.[5] Professor of English John Mullan praised the novel's dialect as an "extraordinary risk" and noted that the language "naturalises the shattered world" of the novel, absorbing and engaging readers.[6] Author Peter Schwenger described the language as "quasi-illiterate, largely phonetic," arguing that it "slows us to the pace of an oral culture."[7]
Some features include: