'That they will conquer the world is a nightmare that haunts me'.
Golding’s final novel, left in draft at his death, tells the story of Arieka, one of the last priestesses of Apollo to prophesy at Delphi, in the shadowy years when the Romans were securing their grip on the tribes and cities of Greece. The plain, unloved daughter of a local grandee, she is rescued from the contempt and neglect of her family by her Delphic role. Her ambiguous attitude to the god and her belief in him seem to move in parallel with the decline of the god himself – but things are more complicated than they appear.
Judy focuses on Golding's female narrator
The Double Tongue is Golding's first novel with a solely female narrator, told in the first person. Although Part Two of Darkness Visible is about Sophy, Golding tells her story through omniscient narration […]
In The Double Tongue, Anticrates is Arieka’s father. He is a rich man who owns at least a mile of land near Delphi, which will […]
2024 saw a huge anniversary for us – the 70th anniversary of the publication of Lord of the Flies and the publication of the very first graphic […]
'It reads as a complete work, one of great delicacy and freshness'.
Meg Rosoff
'Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion and the luck of writers, prove to be the most powerful thing in the world'.
William Golding, Nobel Lecture, 1983