Product Description

When the spring came the people - what was left of them - moved back by the old paths from the sea. But this year strange things were happening, terrifying things that had never happened before. There were inexplicable sounds and smells, new, unimaginable creatures half-glimpsed through the leaves: a new race of men and women. Though they did not know it yet, though they were never really to know it, the day of the people was over. It had ended a long time ago. The Inheritors is a brilliant imaginative recreation of the lost world of the Neanderthals, and of the Neanderthals' successors - the first humans

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #619433 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. He joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and was present at the sinking of the Bismarck. His first novel, Lord of the Files, was published in 1954. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, and was knighted in 1988. He died in 1993

Customer Reviews

Seeing the world through Neanderthal eyes
This is a most magical read, especially if approached with as few preconceptions as possible. It is very rarely that an author creates the illusion of being inside the head of a totally different kind of being so successfully. The pictures that come into the mind through Golding's masterly description are so clear and compelling, and yet at times so puzzling, that it is hard to set the book aside for even a short time, so immersed does one become in the drama that unfolds. I was totally unprepared for the extent to which my emotions were involved in the respective fates of the protagonists, so much so that by the end of the story my heart ached for the pity of it all as the reality of the situation was finally revealed. All those questions and uncertainties which presented themselves in the course of the tale were finally resolved, but in such a way that I was immediately compelled to start reading the book again from the very beginning in the light of my new understanding. More excitingly, I have found that the ideas incorporated in the story have the power to set up whole new trains of thought about the history and culture of Homo sapiens and the roots of our mythologies. William Golding is probably known to most readers as the author of the school set text "Lord of the Flies", but please don't let that deter you from reading this tour de force. My fifteen-year-old was as least as captivated by this book as I was.

Sparse, powerful prose
I read this book long before reading Lord of the Flies, at about the time when most people are reading Lord of the Flies instead. I agree wholeheartedly with a previous reviewer, that this is better than Lord of the Flies, and that's saying something.

This is a really engaging read. The book tells of the beginnings of the human race through the eyes of a primitive, neanderthal ancestor called Lok. Because Lok has few words and relies on sense perception differently the prose can be quite hard to follow at first until you allow yourself to get under his skin.

The writing is all the more powerful for being pared down and simplified. You can sense the pains Golding took to find exactly the right way to express feelings and burgeoning ideas in the slowly awakening brain of his protagonist.

Golding seems to delight in peeling back the layers of civilised man and looking at the workings underneath and nowhere is this more evident or well done than in this particular book.

I'd give this 10 stars out of 5!!
'The Inheritors' is not an easy book, but no book is more worth
the effort. Some of the themes of 'Lord of the Flies' are explored further, but this is altogether a more original and, in the end, more moving book. Lok, the principal Neanderthal, and his little family are innocent, kindly, unselfish, modest, artful in their way (though Lok is not clever ; he does not have many 'pictures'), and therefore, in our world, even all that time ago, doomed. The story of their slow annihilation is heart-breaking. The imaginative and intellectual tour de force worked by Golding to write this book is quite amazing. It's a virtuoso performance, but it is art concealing art - what you will remember are Lok's cries when he knows that those he loves are dead, and the poignant picture of his small figure, seen from a distance, just before the end. I cannot adequately say how wonderful this book is.