Russell Hoban in conversation with Will Self

This event was recorded at The British Library on Wednesday 2 February 2011. It accompanied the Library’s exhibition Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices.
The conversation marked the 30th anniversary of Russell Hoban’s novel remarkable novel Riddley Walker - composed entirely in an archaic future-pidgin English. It depicted a post-apocalyptic Britain in the far future. Long after a nuclear holocaust (‘the 1 big 1’), humanity has reverted to a near medieval state. Ignorance and superstition have replaced the old "clevvness" and the English language has degraded into a patois that retains fragments of past knowledge, wrapped up in folklore. Twelve year old Riddley Walker roams around war-ravaged Kent trying to piece together what happened around Doomsday, and comes across a plot to rekindle the atom bomb.
Russell Hoban talked to Will Self about his unique novel and its language, as well as his wider work.
Russell Hoban (1925-2011) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and moved permanently to London in 1969. He started writing at an early age, winning prizes for his stories and poems during his school years. He served in the US Army during the Second World War, earning a Bronze Star, and later worked as an illustrator in advertising. He thought and wrote in an extraordinary range of genres, becoming first a bestselling writer of children's books, particularly the immortal Frances stories and his first novel, The Mouse and His Child (1968) This was later made into an animated film, featuring the voices of Peter Ustinov and Chloris Leachman.. After its publication he continued to write for children (most notably perhaps the Captain Najork books with Quentin Blake and The Marzipan Pig), but focussed most of his energies on a sequence of wonderful novels including Kleinzeit (1974), Pilgermann (1983), The Medusa Frequency (1987), Amaryllis Night and Day (2001) and Angelica Lost and Found (2010). Riddley Walker, published in 1980, was his biggest publishing success, making the bestseller lists in the US and garnering several awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1982, and the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983. He also wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Second Mrs Kong (1994). Russell continued working and writing until his death in December 2011. In spring 2021 Penguin Modern Classics embarked on a major re-issue programme of Russell’s major novels for adults, including Riddley Walker.
Will Self is a novelist, short story writer and cultural and political commentator. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. He wrote an introduction to the 2002 edition of Riddley Walker, and in his own The Book Of Dave he employs a similar future demotic English called Mokni.