The Inheritors cover art

The Inheritors

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Inheritors

By: William Golding
Narrated by: David Dawson
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Hunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning vision of prehistory on the cusp of a new age, from the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by Ben Okri.

This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other.

When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds.

But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds, and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest; an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over ...

'An earthquake in the petrified forests of the English novel.' Arthur Koestler

'A tour de force ... Genius.' Daily Telegraph

'Alarming, eye-opening, desolating, mind-invading and unique.' New Statesman

'Powerful and provocative ... Each time I revisit The Inheritors I find something new.' Penelope Lively

©2021 William Golding (P)2021 Faber & Faber Adventure Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Spire cover art
Lark Ascending cover art
Savage Eden cover art
The Way to Impossible Island cover art
The Hearing Trumpet cover art
Grendel cover art
The Jungle Book cover art
Hero: A Simon Serrailler Short Story cover art
Everyman cover art
Under the Lesser Moon cover art
Bone Talk cover art
People of the Wolf cover art
The Girl and the Tiger cover art
The Peregrine cover art
A Time of Gifts cover art
Norse Mythology cover art
All stars
Most relevant
I also read this 40 years ago .I recalled that it was a powerful book with a pessimistic view of Homo Sapiens .That attitude did not necessarily suit the optimism of my youth but it certainly fit in with that shown by Golding in Lord of the Flies a novel foisted upon many a 70s school student .Having revisited it now it's clear that the use of language to convey another form of consciousness in the Neanderthals is extraordinary. It's not entirely perfect as using language to describe a non lingual culture from the inside is perhaps an impossible task but Golding gets as near to damn it in doing this .There are so many parallels that could be drawn from this book that it would bear a number of readings ( listenings) .It was the authors favourite book and it may well be the best that he wrote .The reader gets the narration spot on .

Masterful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I first read this about 40 years ago, but I come back again and again. Now I can listen to it too, which is great, as I can’t jump ahead. It is a story of origins and in light of modern archeological finds, very prescient.

An extraordinary story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A fascinating imagining of the world of our prehistoric ancestors. Golding describes the life and customs of a small neanderthal tribe, and their destructive encounter with another homo species. The special quality of the book is in the way Golding uses language to depict the senses, perceptions and relationships of the neanderthal people, a race without complex language or power of imagination. We really feel we enter their world, and sympathetically experience their astonishment and bewilderment when confronted with the creativity - and destructiveness - of the new order. The novel is also an allegory for the loss of happiness and innocence in our race, as in the biblical account in Genesis of the Fall of Man, written as it was by a man with conflicted emotions about his active service in the second World War.

Absorbing depiction of neanderthal extinction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There is no wonder that William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This novel is unique.

It is is the story of a band of Neanderthals and their encounter with 'the new ones', an advanced breed of humans (homo sapiens) who arrive at the island near to the cave where the Neanderthals live. But this is so much more than just a story - it is the exploration of a mindscape very different from our own. Every action, every idea and every emotion is related from the point of view of a Neanderthal's mindset - more rudimentary, more visual, more natural and more innocent. As Lok and his companions struggle to find meaning in the strange events occurring around them so the story unfolds until, with a sudden twist of perspective, the nature of the two groups of people is subtly revealed.

David Dawson's narration is beautifully measured, drawing you into a journey of perceptions quite unlike anything written before or since. Astonishing! Stupendous! An imaginative tour de force! Unique!

Astonishing! Stupendous! Unique!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found this a very moving book - the Neanderthals naive pastoral lives being invaded by Homo Sapiens. It draws you into a different mind - slower, sensuous and immediate. It can be a little confusing at times but is worth sticking with. No spoilers but the last two chapters pack a punch.

Moving and original

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.