Semi-nomadic groups scratch survival from the boggy ground, often disinterring the remains of a destroyed civilisation. In search of the lost power of "clevverness", some now excavate for "Salt 4" (sulphur), the key "gready mint" (ingredient) of gunpowder, which is to be reinvented by the end of the novel. The rulers of former times were the "Puter Leat" (computer elite). With a brilliant observation of incongruity, Hoban has shards of scientific vocabulary survive in the neo-primitive idioms of this post-nuclear time: "program" for plan "gallack seas" for the heavens. This is England long after some nuclear holocaust. We piece together what must have happened. It is an extraordinary risk for a novelist to take: to write in so rebarbative a fashion. Even as you get the habit of Riddley's vocabulary and his lack of punctuation, you still have to read more slowly than you are used to doing. "Thayr ar tu menne agenst us this tym we mus du betteren that." Only three words out of these 13 are spelt "normally". Spelling is phoneticised, hampering the process of recognition that usually speeds us through sentences. "I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly benn the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs." The story is narrated by Riddley Walker, and begins with "my naming day when I come 12" (we will soon find that a 12-year-old is not a child in his world). W hat has happened to the English language? Begin Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and you are in a struggle with words.
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