Shardik by Richard Adams – back in print in a 40th anniversary edition

The extraordinary fantasy novel by the author of Watership Down is back in print in a 40th anniversary edition

Alex Clark - The Guardian, Wednesday 26 November 2014 

Richard Adams’s second novel, Shardik, convinced him to quit the office. Photograph: Topham/PA

All writers love the book that allows them to give up their day job. And although Richard Adams’s debut novel, Watership Down, is his most celebrated, it was Shardik, his second, that convinced him to quit the office. Published in 1974, it is a heady piece of fantasy centred on the creation of an animal-based religion, in which a giant bear is the object of worship of a developing human society riven by territorial and ideological dispute. It’s hard to see direct similarities with the work of other writers, although there are echoes of CS Lewis and Tolkien. And big animals were definitely in the air (or sea); Jaws was also published that year.

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