The Inheritors

From my reading of Palaeontology in Public – a book I very much enjoyed reading, found particularly interesting, and that I am far past when I had hoped to have a full-length review completed – I took note of two novels discussed in it that took up Homo neanderthalensis as their subjects. I subsequently read both and while I would not recommend one of them as I didn’t find it at all to my taste (the writing style was far too overwrought, in my opinion), the other I found absolutely riveting. This latter is William Golding’s 1955 novel The Inheritors.

Those who know Mr. Golding’s work will most likely know him from his 1954 novel The Lord of the Flies. Published only a year later, the much less well-known The Inheritors presents the story of a small family band of Neanderthals living in a time when their species is already largely extinct and Cro Magnon were expanding their range. What makes it so particularly effective is the narrator intentionally limiting the knowledge of the reader to the perspective of the Neanderthals themselves.

When I sought to take up my reading of this novel, it was rather a challenge to find a copy. I found it necessary to ask my friendly, local public library to obtain one for me via inter-library loan. Fortunately, for those reading this essay, Penguin Random House has solved that problem with the introduction of a new edition of it in their Penguin Classics series. This new edition also features a foreword by Ben Okri and a list of works for further reading (well, as some of them as such things as video games, not just reading, perhaps) by Prof. Rachel Greenwald Smith. Take these latter for what you will, but do please consider the novel itself for your reading enjoyment. It truly is quite worthwhile.