HOBAN, Russell. Riddley Walker. London: Jonathan Cape. 1980. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by Mon Mohan. A fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents clean and fine throughout, with just a few mild marks to textblock top edge. The dust jacket unclipped (£5.95) and fine, the red lettering to spine unfaded as is almost the case.
Hoban’s magnum opus, a fabulous book set long into the future, ‘when killer dogs roam England and green rot grows on the rubble of Cantebury [where] people dig for old iron and talk of lost cleverness, of boats in the air and pictures on the wind’ [flap]. Huxley and Orwell gave us horrific visions of the future, but this cataloguer is wudderin’ if Hoban’s world might actually be a more accurate speculation. Its unique strength might come from its largely phonetic dialect, a kind of futuristic language adopted throughout the novel. While the reader initially grapples with this, one quickly comprehends, a measure of the reader’s ingenuity.
HOBAN, Russell. Riddley Walker. London: Jonathan Cape. 1980. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket designed by Mon Mohan. A fine copy. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The contents clean and fine throughout, with just a few mild marks to textblock top edge. The dust jacket unclipped (£5.95) and fine, the red lettering to spine unfaded as is almost the case.
Hoban’s magnum opus, a fabulous book set long into the future, ‘when killer dogs roam England and green rot grows on the rubble of Cantebury [where] people dig for old iron and talk of lost cleverness, of boats in the air and pictures on the wind’ [flap]. Huxley and Orwell gave us horrific visions of the future, but this cataloguer is wudderin’ if Hoban’s world might actually be a more accurate speculation. Its unique strength might come from its largely phonetic dialect, a kind of futuristic language adopted throughout the novel. While the reader initially grapples with this, one quickly comprehends, a measure of the reader’s ingenuity.
