The Inheritors
William Golding
(Faber & Faber)
Lok and his tribe think
of themselves as 'the people', inheritors of an unchanging world. Then, as they
follow their migratory pattern, they encounter a new race. The first in a long
and brutal history of colonisations has begun.
William Golding is
rightly lauded for writing The Lord of the Flies. It's a novel that, thanks to
being taught to generations of school kids, has wormed its way into popular
culture. Even if most of the people citing it have never read the book itself
all the way through.
Success at that level
can overshadow the rest of a writer's work. That is what seems to have happened
to Golding, in the case of this novel, first published in 1955, and it is
rather a shame.
In The Inheritors,
Golding uses Lok and his clan to show creatures who relate to the world in a
way that is totally different to ours. He does so in a way that is both strange
and sympathetic. These aren't stereotypical "savages" dragging their
knuckles down the road to perdition.
He also touches on
issues of colonisation that are still pertinent today. The doomed Neanderthals
being swept away by Homo Sapiens are the ancestors of all the indigenous
peoples usurped by the West.
This is a brilliantly
conceived novel telling one of the oldest and cruellest human stories. One, we
are still, sadly, repeating to this day.
Good
Reads, Monday 1st May 2023
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