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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780156443791
ISBN number: 0156443791
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: September 25, 1963
Publishing house: Harvest Books
Sale Popularity Level: 247391
Studio: Harvest Books
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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.
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Rated by buyers 
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The Interitors is a brilliantly-themed novel, with a very daring style, but not as difficult to read as some reviewers would have it. I very first read this around thirty years ago, and have never forgotten it. Less heavy-handed than Lord of the Flies, this is Golding's best work.
Rated by buyers 
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The Inheritors is a fascinating fable of the time in history (not so long ago - only five hundred generations or so before you, valued reader), when Neanderthals co-existed with homosapiens. Golding brings all his imaginative powers to bear to imagine himself in the Neanderthal consciousness. Simple named characters such as Lok and Mal and Fa witness strange things happening in their limited world - such as the disappearance of their precious log bridge across the river. Horrific things start happening, which shake their world view, their limited conceptions of events as 'pictures' rather than a human consciousness, comunicated in linguistic form. This is the era of the end of their people.
Golding draws the human conquerors as advanced only in the sense that they have mobilised natural resources to more sophisticated ends - such as hollowing out trees to make boats, and developing more sophisticated tools than the rudimentary Neanderthal implements. Morally, they are far more savage than the primitives they displace - a cruel, selfish species who will kill those alien to themselves, capture their young and become inheritors of the earth. The Neanderthals are an endearing, enclosed people with tender rituals of caring for each other and burying their dead. Their knowledge of things is fatally limited, and they struggle to express their horror of what is happening to them as they cannot muster up the language. They rely on their simple religion, Oa, the earth goddess who is a far more gentle and tender influence than the harsh pragmatic religion of the homosapiens with their savage stag mutilating rituals.
By the end, the last Neanderthal is hunched in a ball, gibbering with grief and bewilderment as he has witnessed the end of his people. The humans, meanwhile, sail aimlessly in their log boats on the river, struggling themselves to make sense of their aims and purpose in a world without structure or meaning.
Thirty thousand years later, are things any different?
Rated by buyers -
Since reading "Lord of the Flies," I've stumbled over other Golding titles in hopes I would find the same brevity, clarity, and thought-provoking concepts. "The Spire" came close, but lacked the imaginative setting. "Pincher Martin" had the setting, but became so myopic as to be disorienting, eventually losing its footing.
Along comes "The Inheritors." Reviews here gave mixed signals: "A mess." "A work of genius." "Bored to tears."
As with Golding's bestselling masterpiece, "The Inheritors" pulls us quickly into the story of an isolated people. This time, instead of marooned school children, we discover Neanderthal types who are utterly believable and likeable. This alone shows Golding's genius. He makes us care about these characters and see them as people we can relate to, and yet he gives little by means of communication or description. They act like humans with true personalities. Soon, though, the group is threatened by another group of pale-skinned Others. These intruders seem equally bent on survival, but by more violent means if necessary.
In many ways, this is an elongated short story. It could've been told in less pages, albeit with less ambience. While I admired the setting and characterization, I despaired for more plot, more action, more...something. In so many ways, this was a masterful book. In the end, however, it seemed to be a work of muddled beauty. It lacked impact. For those who love Golding's style, as I do, you will surely appreciate this book. For others, it may be a slight disappointment.
Rated by buyers 
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Make this a 2.5 star review because I`ll give Golding the benefit of the doubt that his writing is way over my head. No reason to mark his novel down just because my poor Cro-Magnon pea brain couldn't follow it. However, I expected better execution in the writing from a Nobel Prize winner.
The story line and point of view are good. If this isn't a parable about the effect that human contact has with any other species, environment, or place, I don't know what is. Golding gets points for making me ashamed of my own species as he describes what happens when the peaceful Neanderthal world collides with Homo sapiens in very dramatic and unpleasant ways.
Perhaps that is his point; the Neanderthals were pushed out of existence because they were not as intellectually developed as their Homo sapiens `Inheritors'.
I caught on early that the Neanderthals' `pictures' were personal ideas and memories, and the `shared pictures' are ideas and memories transmitted telepathically. However, Golding tries to describe these pictures in a contrivance of words instead of pictures, and decides to constrain the description of the pictures to the individual's limited perception. That was a noble goal, and done well. However, when he cannot succeed via that route in describing events, he inserts an expository third-person (writer)point of view. That completely confused my pea brain about what was happening. Some scenes are terribly confusing because of this.
I likened my experience of reading `The Inheritors' to that of Anthony Burgess' `A Clockwork Orange', which IMHO was a more successful writing experiment. Burgess at least provided us with a glossary to define the futurespeak of his Droog culture. Golding could have invented a word-picture map.
I cannot believe that schools are recommending this as a reading assignment. But then in my day they were forcing the dreadful `Catcher in the Rye' on us.
Rated by buyers -
I looked at this book from the perspective of its title. There is a question of the fate of the Neanderthals, and this book gives one possible, and credible answer. The Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnon were very, very different, according to Golding.
The Neanderthals were simple, crude, and gentle, but with an understanding of their own mortality, and employing rituals for important occasions. They may have gone around unclothed, and with minimal tools, sometimes walking on all fours, but they were not "animals" in the common meaning of that term.
The Cro-Magnon people had already been building boats, had used the bow-and-arrow as a formidable weapon, developed a more complex social structure, knew how to ferment honey into liquor, and had an understanding of protection against the elements. These two peoples never seemed to develop a common view of each other, with the Neanderthal having more curiosity than fear, and more fear than curiosity from the Cro-Magnon. In all, a credible look at ancient peoples.
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