Russell Hoban

Russell Hoban's masterpiece, a post-apocalyptic vision of humanity stripped back to its essentials. O what we ben! And what we come to... Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilisation, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.

A richly strange and funny novel follows one man grappling with love, life and creativity. On an ordinary day in a strangely unfamiliar London, Kleinzeit is fired from his advertising job and told he must go to hospital with a skewed hypotenuse. There on Ward A4, he falls in love with the divine, rosy-cheeked Sister and is sent spinning into...

'What are we, Papa?' the toy mouse child asked his father. 'I don't know,' the father answered. 'We must wait and see.'So begins the story of a tin father and son who dance under a Christmas tree until they break the ancient clockwork rules and are themselves broken. Thrown away, then rescued from a dustbin and repaired by a tramp,...

Hoban's first book for adults mixes playful fantasy with an insightful meditation on fathers and sons. The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz begins with the note, "I have gone to look for a lion." In a world where lions have become extinct, the map-maker Jachin-Boaz nevertheless abandons his wife and son to find one, leaving just this message. However, his...

Magical realism meets Greek myth in this wonderfully offbeat novel. An inexplicable message flashing onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3 a.m. heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer's block leads him to 'those places in your head that you can't get to...

Places Russell Hoban where he has got to be - among the greatest, timeless novelists — The Times Born to swim thousands of miles in the ocean, the giant sea turtles are now trapped in a tank of golden-green water at London Zoo. But not for much longer. Two lonely people, a bookseller and a children's illustrator, have begun thinking...

Existential science fiction with a family secret at its heart Fourth Galaxy, 4 November 2052 — in the blackness of space, a figure in blue overalls tumbles over and over as it drifts towards the planet Badr-al-Budur. No space suit, no helmet, no oxygen. He can't be alive, can he? But he is. First Navigator Fremder Gorn is the only...

The classic funny I Can Read story about a stubborn little badger with very particular tastes in food. Frances is a fussy eater. In fact, the only thing she likes is bread and jam. She won't touch her squishy soft-boiled egg. She trades away her chicken-salad sandwich at lunch. She turns up her nose at boring veal cutlets. Unless her...