Russell Hoban always joked that to be truly appreciated as an author, he would need to die. Six years since his death, with his work more admired than ever, the cult novelist has achieved a sign of cultural approbriation in the form of an elaborately bound Folio Society edition of his classic post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, freshly illustrated by long-time collaborator Quentin Blake.
Riddley Walker tells the story of a young boy, Riddley, growing up in Kent 2,500 years after a nuclear catastrophe – “the 1 Big 1” – plunged England back into a second Iron Age. Small bands of survivors huddle in ramshackle settlements, packs of vicious dogs roam the countryside and the rudimentary government – led by power-hungry “Pry Mincer” Abel Goodparley – communicates its messages through travelling puppet shows.
The catastrophe has even broken language, and the book is narrated in "Riddleyspeak", a mangled phonetic English which begs to be spoken aloud. Many novels imagine a post-apocalyptic future; few, if any, do so as systematically as Hoban, whose tortured, dense dialect renacts the terrible “chaynjis” that have wrecked the world.
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As former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams notes in a specially commissioned postscript: “If all good fiction has the effect of making us strange in our own eyes and ears, Hoban’s books are very good fiction indeed...the language of the story acts out the trauma in its own fragmentation.”
For this limited edition of 1,000 copies, The Folio Society commissioned a grey cloth cover spattered in dark green blotches, like mould on an untended grave; the size of the £295 book, a slab 25 by 35 centimetres, enhances the tomblike aspect. Inside, the pages are rough to the touch and flecked with marks of printing. “The paper we used is quite unusual,” production manager Julie Farquhar tells WIRED. “It's 80 per cent recycled material, so it's got that feel as if it's handcrafted.”
Blake used quill pens to create 39 dark, brooding images, unlike his normal lively illustrations. Rather than trying to depict the action, he writes in an accompanying essay, he focused on atmosphere: “the darkness, the drizzle, the ruined landscape.” Most are in shades of grey. “We agreed before the work began,” Blake explains, "that colour, when it appeared, would be strong and shine through only at rare moments.”
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Blake worked with Hoban over several decades, illustrating his children’s books How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen, and his final story, Rosie’s Magic Horse. Yet he had some doubts over his suitability for the project. “There might well be other publishers who would not think of me as the obvious choice,” he writes. “Any sense of joie de vivre might seem to be quite inappropriate.”
Any concerns were eased with a crucial blessing: a dedication from Hoban, speaking as Riddley, in a 1980 edition of the book. “My authority from both Russell and Riddley for setting about my task,” Blake calls the note, which is reproduced below. “What more encouragement could I wish for?”
Riddley Walker is available today from The Folio Society
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
