The Inheritors [Paperback]

William Golding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 1981

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings like themselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Homo sapiens, fascinating in their skills and sophistication, terrifying in their cruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient corruption, spell doom for the more gentle folk whose world they will inherit. Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Cornwall, England, William Golding started writing at the age of seven. Though he studied natural sciences at Oxford to please his parents, he also studied English and published his first book, a collection of poems, before finishing college. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, participating in the Normandy invasion. Golding's other novels include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, The Spire, Rites of Passage (Booker Prize), and The Double Tongue.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket (December 2, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671437496
• ISBN-13: 978-0671437497
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,728,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Cornwall, England, William Golding started writing at the age of seven. Though he studied natural sciences at Oxford to please his parents, he also studied English and published his first book, a collection of poems, before finishing college. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, participating in the Normandy invasion. Golding's other novels include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, The Free Fall, Pincher Martin, The Double Tongue, and Rites of Passage, which won the Booker Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pre-technology earth: Neanderthal loses to Homo-sapiens., April 25, 2001

By 

S. A. MacAller "sama10" (UCLA,CA.USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Inheritors (Paperback)

Golding simply holds up as an excellent, if not classic, author no matter what subject he researched and pursued. I couldn't put this novel down. Golding takes his readers on a journey into a world seen through the eyes, visions, and emerging language expressions of primitive man. His sensitively drawn characters, whose language is limited, form `pictures' in their minds and use this mental illumination to guide them to food, to their seasonal homes and to acquaint them to possible dangers. The descriptions are marvelous: cold, wet, hungry, dependence on a sense of smell (you find yourself sniffing a lot), stones for weapons, hyenas signaling a kill for the band of our earliest ancestors to steal, recipes cooked in a style that remind one of haggis (no refrigerator raiding is elicited in this read by the way) and a lush plant entwined forest of the early spring replete with mystical ice women to be worshipped.

Within the pages, the author's imagination, ideas, and symbols are used at their best removing the reader from the world of 2001 into a consideration of the earth and stars alone, untouched by any sort of technology. Essentially it is Lok and his small Neanderthal band that are faced with other humans, unlike themselves, for the first time. The 'other' (homo-sapiens) is armed with bows and arrows, sharpened tools made from bone and an ability to cross rivers and lakes by rowing logs. Golding possibly was inspired by the scientific find of a primitive people who could cross the water discovered sometime in the early 1950's. In any event this is a story that readers will find to be absorbing and has the potential to provide an insight into a daily life of a society devoted to survival with only the earth as a guide to how. Wiliam Golding tells a stirring, astonishing story with a writer's technical virtuosity applied as only he can do.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it, August 20, 2003

By 

Puabi (Californialand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Inheritors (Paperback)

I haven't been so emotionally involved in a book since...well, for a long time.

This novel is about a family group of Neanderthals who travel to their cave for the warmer part of the year and meet there a group of modern men. The resulting events are as intense and terrifying for the reader as they are for the Neanderthals. Because Golding shows everything from their point of view, we are often left as puzzled and uncomprehending as they. The descriptions of objects the we know about -- bows and arrows, boats, alcohol -- are written as the Neanderthals saw them. The actions of the modern humans -- their rituals and hierarchy -- Golding makes successfully foreign -- but when we sit and think about what we've read, we realize, wait, I *know* this, this is what humans do.

The characterization is achieved deftly and sensitively, Lok and Fa are compelling as is their fate. Prehistory was very likely *not* like this -- but the themes stand, and this book is powerful.

I do not think Golding is doing a disservice to our species, because this is how we are. He is telling a damn good, if tragic, story. I will re-read this book over and over again, I know. Golding is truly great, and this book is greater, in my opinion, than the oft-assigned "Lord of the Flies."

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To see ourselves as others see us, January 3, 2000

By 

Doug Vaughn - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Inheritors (Paperback)

This amazingly inventive piece of fiction takes on some of the same themes the author dealt with in Lord of the Flies, but in a surprising way. In this novel, the protagonists are the last of the Neandrathals who are in deadly conflict with emergent Homo Sapiens for their survival. Golding imagines these people as being essentially pre-verbal and it is a testiment to his skill as a writer that he can create effective characters without the tool of dialogue. Because of this convention, and the need to keep the story from the Neandrathal's (not quite human) point of view, it takes some time for the reader to achieve an understanding of what is happening and why. It becomes, nevertheless, a very moving story and one of the more inventive tales in serious modern literature.

As a companion piece from the current Homo Sapien point of view, one might want to read Beards novel about a hypothetical new jump in evolution, Darwin's Radio.