Since Russell Hoban is an American—now settled in London—who has also written books for children, it seems natural enough that Riddley Walker should pick up where Huckleberry Finn leaves off…. The voices are very similar, at once young and knowing, innocent and disillusioned, the voices of survivors fumbling with a language they have never been formally taught.

Hoban, however, has transformed Huck in a minatory, contemporary way, much as William Golding, in Lord of the Flies, rewrote The Swiss Family Robinson. Riddley Walker is Huck Finn after an atomic disaster, mourning his jaunty self, stripped barer than he could ever have imagined, with no Judge Thatcher or Aunt Sally waiting in the wings to rescue him. He is also a creature of a distant and desolate future, though just how distant he himself does not know….

Hoban has said Riddley Walker took him five and a...