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Someone that labels himself a metaphysical writer and talks about 'the thingness of things' and a primal consciousness that 'looks out of the eye sockets' one might think would not be involved with writing for children. Yet Russell Hoban must be one...
My relationship with Russell Hoban began a little like one of his novels might: in a disordered room in Fulham, piled high with boxes and files.
Anyone who has ever seen the inside of Russell's inner sanctum knows that it's like stepping into his mind. Suddenly you're surrounded by all of the...
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Between September 2002 and March 2005, Russell Hoban contributed to his own discussion forum, The Kraken. In the first of a 2-part feature, Richard Cooper looks back over a selection of his posts.
"The Kraken" Yahoo Group was established as a Russell...
In a terrifying dream-journey John struggles through jungle undergrowth, travelling through fierce rapids and exploring a mystery passage before he discovers a courtyard guarded by a stone winged serpent. There John meets another John, his real self, and realises that he is only part of the dream.
All quotations come from Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker: Expanded Edition, Indiana University Press, 1998
Although he sets his novel Riddley Walker (published in 1980) in a post-apocalyptic future, Russell Hoban makes use of the medieval world to mark this future as a site of the "primitive." For...
In Ariosto's epic 16th-century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica , chained, naked, to a rock and menaced by a sea monster is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero, riding a ‘hippogriff', the offspring of a griffin and a mare - an entirely imaginary winged creature (as readers of Harry Potter...
From the jacket:
The first time Peter Diggs saw Amaryllis she was at a bus stop where the street sign said BALSAMIC although there was nothing vinegary about the place. The bus was unthinkably tall, made of yellow, orange and pink rice paper and bamboo, lit from within like a Japanese lantern. That...
From the jacket:
Phil Ockerman falls hard for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in a church crypt in Clerkenwell. ‘Is Bertha's trunk anything like Pandora's box?' he wonders. Each recently separated, both their Suns are squared by Neptune. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the 17th...
Along with four Hoban novels, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Turtle Diary, Pilgermann and Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer, the Omnibus contains Return of Manny Rat, the incomplete, fragmentary sequel to The Mouse and His Child, which Hoban began but abandoned and which had never before been...
Jonathan Fitch was shocked by Mr Rinyo-Clacton's offer of a million pounds and one year to live, but what happened next was even more shocking. In a state of desperation after being left by the beautiful Serafina, Jonathan does his best to pull up his socks (and his trousers) with varying success....
