Russell Hoban
Posted in Events dear boy. Events, Fantasy, Other fiction, Science Fiction at 20:35 on 15 December 2011
A couple of days ago Dobie Gray, now, on Tuesday, it was Russell Hoban.
Looking on my shelves I find not only his children’s classic The Mouse and his Child nor yet just the remarkable Riddley Walker but also The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Turtle Diary and Pilgerman.
Hoban was quite prolific (Fantastic Fiction lists 87 books) so I didn’t manage to keep up with all his output.
His work spanned a multitude of genres from the post-apocalyptic Science Fiction of Riddley Walker through Fantasy to Realism and he seemed equally at home in them all.
In the field of Science Fiction, though, and its close relation Fantasy, it will undoubtedly be for the tour de force that was Riddley Walker – a novel written in an English so far from the standard that it might at first seem totally unreadable (trust me, with a little bit of effort it isn’t, and is well worth that effort) – and The Mouse and his Child that he will be most remembered.
Russell Conwell Hoban: 4/2/1925-13/12/2011. So it goes.
Tags: Fantastic Fiction, Fantasy, Kleinzeit, Other fiction, Pilgerman, Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban, Science Fiction, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, The Mouse and his Child, Turtle Diary
