THE INHERITORS

by William Golding ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 25, 1962

In his concern with immediate present and imminent future, man's memory has traditional limits. Here in a novel about the last survivors of Neanderthal man, the expert author of Lord of the Flies advances these limits to probe prehistory and the nearest ancestors of Homo Sapiens. Eight of the early people remained to continue their well-ordered, simple, and serene existence. When Great Oa, the maternal deity, takes four adults back into her belly, only Lok, a man of many words but few pictures (thoughts), and Fa, a woman blessed with humble commonsense, are left to shelter two children from the sudden presence of Other--the New People. These strange bony, upright creatures have peculiar protuberances over their eyes and removable fur about their middles. They drink from an animal skin, move on the river in hollow logs and, although wise and clever, treat each other and the two captured children with savage cruelty. Lok and Fa, gentle and foredoomed, sense only danger, while we, the modern inheritors, become gradually--and somewhat painfully aware of our critical resemblance to the New People. Carefully developed in the reactions and expressions of the ""primitives"", it is consummate fiction with an aura of discomfiting reality. Even more rewarding, perhaps, is the penetrating social and human criticism artfully enmeshed in the fiction--a challenge to contemporary descendants of the strange New People. As successor to Lord of the Flies, which has replaced Orwell and Huxley as a campus classic, this book is insured a wide audience and far more critical attention than its predecessor received.

Pub Date: July 25, 1962

ISBN: 0548439850

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962

Categories: FICTION