'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban

I have read a lot of science fiction, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to find science fiction novels that wow me like the genre once did. For the past few weeks I have been enjoying 'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban, which is the best SF novel I have read since February last year*. It has taken so long to read because the whole book is written in a made up version of English.

'How cud any 1 not want to get that shyning Power back from time back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air and picters in the wind? How cud any 1 not want to see them shyning weals terning?'

Riddley Walker, the novel's eponymous narrator, lives an unspecified length of time in the future in post-apocalyptic Kent, where technology has regressed to Iron Age levels. Riddley tells us his story, records some of his people's folklore, and provides a copy of the one ancient text shared by the various tribes: 'The Eusa Story', which tells of how Eusa, with the aid of Mr Clevver, shrunk himself down and found a little man called Addom, who he accidentally split in half while interrogating to discover the secrets of the universe. 'The Eusa Story' is written in a more archaic dialect of fictional post-apocalyptic English:

'Owt uv that 2 peaces uv the Littl Shynin Man the Addom thayr cum shyningness in wayvs in spredin circels. Wivverin & wayverin & humin with a hy soun. Lytin up the dark wud... Bad Tym it wuz then. Peapl din no if they wud be alyv 1 day to the nex. Din even no if thayd be alyv 1 min tu the nex. Sum stuk tu gether sum din. Sum tyms thay dru lots. Sum got et so uthers cud liv. Cudn be shur of nuthing din no wut wuz sayf tu eat or drink & tryin tu keep wyd uv uther forajers & dogs it wuz nuthing onle Luck if enne 1 stayd alyv.'

'Riddley Walker' was first published in 1980, so it pre-dates textspeak and the internet. Perhaps the last few decades, with their lols and m8s and rofls, have detracted from the inventiveness of Hoban's Riddleyspeak. I think it shows that Hoban was extremely prescient: we have already seen English head in Riddley's direction. Hoban says in the afterword: 'Riddleyspeak is only a breaking down and twisting of standard English, so the reader who sounds out the words and uses a little imagination ought to be able to understand it. Technically it works well with the story because it slows the reader down to Riddley's rate of comprehension.' By forcing you to read it slowly, as you decipher the language, 'Riddley Walker' draws you into its world far more than the average post-apocalypse novel. Riddley's world seems hideously plausible.

'I said, 'You cunt.'

He said, 'Funny what peopl wil use for a hard word. The name of a pleasur thing and a place where new life comes out of. There ben times nor not too far back nyther when they use to offer to that same and very 1 what has her woom in Cambry. That same very Nite and Death we all come out of.'

I said, 'Dont you push words at me you rat cunt.''

Many of the words and phrases have double meanings: one of my favourite examples is 'sarvering gallack seas' for 'sovereign galaxies', but the tribespeople of Riddley's world imagine vast sky-seas, crossable on sky-ships, which are severing ('sarvering') them from the humans on other planets. The novel is highly regarded amongst People Who Read Lots.Will Self wrote the introduction to my edition, and David Mitchell wrote an appreciation in the Guardian. 'Riddley Walker' more than repays the effort spent in reading it. Read it. Read it. Read it.

*I read Karel Capek's 'War with the Newts' in February last year. It's a brilliantly bleak satire on colonialism, fascism and racism, made all the more bleak by the events that occurred after the novel's publication in 1936. ('War with the Newts' pokes fun at the Nazis for not liking Jews and being obsessed with racial superiority.) Capek stands next to Franz Kafka as one of the giants of twentieth century Czech literature.