Hoban started work on Riddley Walker in 1975. Hoban said that he felt the result was more Pinter than Hoban. It was later filmed with a script by Harold Pinter.
It was his favourite novel because with it he discovered his "natural voice". Kleinzeit (1974) drew on his own experiences in hospital. The eclectic Hoban followed with something quite other. Maschler recalled: "It was magical and certainly unlike any living writer, either in the UK or in America." It was a study of a father-son relationship set in a Middle Eastern location. His first adult book, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz,was published in 1973 by Jonathan Cape. He and Gundula had three sons and lived in Fulham for the rest of his life.īy the time of his divorce, Hoban had fulfilled his intention "to write about men and women". His children by his first marriage remained in America and he was estranged from the youngest, Julia, for many years. In 1975 he was divorced, and married Gundula Ahl, whom he had met working in a Sloane Street bookshop. After that everything was an anticlimax."
The truth was, as his editor, Tom Maschler, later pointed out: "It sort of catapulted him into nowhere Riddley Walker was very difficult to live up to, but it didn't quite do enough to set him up." As Hoban himself put it: "I was on a whole other level for six months or a year, then my next novel, Pilgermann, made a front-page review – but it was only half a page. Hoban had until then been best known for his children's fiction, but his brilliant account of a post-apocalyptic world written in a language of his own creation catapulted him into the front rank of fiction writers. On its publication in 1980 Anthony Burgess declared, "This is what literature is meant to be", and The New York Times gave the novel a glowing full-page review on its front page. Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is one of the great novels of the 20th century.
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