Throughout his life, the American writer Russell Hoban produced a number of startlingly original novels. Perhaps the most startling of them all is “Riddley Walker,” first published in 1980. The book belongs to the dystopian genre that has become fairly popular in recent decades. In the post-apocalyptic universe created by Hoban, words create ripples of meaning, echoes reaching into the heart of language and thought through a thick fog of cultural trauma and loss. When Eusa finds the Addom (standing for both a split atom and a mortally wounded and divided “Adam”), he tears him apart, causing everything in the world to be devastated in a nuclear explosion.

Source: New York Times May 26, 2019 23:01 UTC