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Riddley Walker
Summary
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, as well as an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.
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.
Hoban began work on the novel in 1974, inspired by the medieval wall painting of the legend of Saint Eustace at Canterbury Cathedral.
The novel is written in a stylistic, imaginary dialect based on and inspired by the dialect of Kent.
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.
Riddley Walker, the 12-year old protagonist
Brooder Walker, Riddley's father who is known for "connexions" (prophetic stories) and dies early in the story
Lorna, the seer / priest in their village
Abel Goodparley and Erny Orfing, agents of the political-religious government
Eusa, a religious figure portrayed in puppet form
Peter Ruppert noted that Hoban's novel draws on "such well-known dystopias as A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, and A Canticle for Leibowitz", and "what is unique in Hoban's haunting vision of the future is his language" which is described as being similar to the Nadsat slang spoken in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.
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