'This is what literature is meant to be' Anthony Burgess

'O what we ben! And what we come to...' Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story.

'Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer

'A timeless portrayal of the human condition ... frightening and uncanny' Will Self

'A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things' Max Porter

"Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and of style ... funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece." - The Observer

"Extraordinary... a hero with Huck Finn's heart, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy... Fiercely imagined and intensely ponderable." - New York Times Book Review

"Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel people will be reading for a long, long time." - Washington Post

"The strongest, most desolate and bewildered voice in modern fiction. In the mental silence that followed the closing of the last page, I wanted to applaud, through tears." - Cosmopolitan

"The book has an evangelical effect on people ... Riddley is an absorbing character, Hoban's language has a fantastic, rough poetry and the post-apocalyptic world is chilling and convincing." - The Observer