Russell Hoban Forty Years

This edited volume reviews the long career of Russell Hoban, an American writer residing in England who writes for children and adults. The Forty Years in the title refers to the length of Hoban's career to date. Hoban's contribution specifically to children's literature is commemorated in this volume of essays by international scholars,

A mesmerising novel by one of the most original writers of the twentieth century ....'Tantalising, fresh and inventive.Hoban writes about grown-up love with an extraordinarily unsentimental yearning' Literary Review

‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

Tom likes fooling around and is rather good at it, much to the annoyance of his Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong. So one day this fearsome lady decides to teach Tom a lesson and summons Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen to play womble, muck and sneedball. Can it possibly end well for all concerned?

Includes "List of books indexed" (published also separately).

'A piece of invention as original as any of Tolkien's or C.S. Lewis's' New Statesman '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 note. But his decision has unexpected consequences. He will be pursued by his son, Boaz-Jachin, and by something else: a tawny-skinned, amber-eyed beast from another place and time, a bringer of life and death. 'Magic at work ... Funny as well as beautiful' Irish Times 'Hoban is unclassifiable, thank goodness. His narrative is so minutely and compellingly realistic that after a time you cease to notice that he has stood reality on its head' Sunday Times

When eighty-three-year-old Irving Goodman falls in love with actress Justine Trimble she's been dead for forty-seven years. Irving may not know how he's going to attain his heart's desire but he knows a man who does. Istvan Fallok, a wizard of high technology, sees her on Irving's TV screen and hi-techs Justine out of the video tape and into present-day Soho - in black-and-white. As any reader of Bram Stoker will know, blood is the (full-colour) life and in order for Justine to retain her colour she has to be topped up now and then - by Irving and his friends and the odd passer-by. Things become a little complicated when Grace Kowalski brings a Justine Two into the picture and not surprisingly the curiosity of the police is soon aroused ...

'Pilgermann here. I call myself Pilgermann, it's a convenience. I don't know what I am now .'