The Scorpion God

These three stories show us how diverse and changeable our deepest cultural assumptions really are – also, how comic they can seem when examined in isolation.

  • “Smiling over her shoulder, Pretty Flower turned her back in exquisite time to the music and another shawl came off …”
  • “The cry had hardly died away when she had begun to move towards the curtains, knowing that it was the birth cry and all would be well.”
  • “Between the pistons was the most daunting thing of all: Talos, the man of brass. He was headless, a flashing sphere half-sunk in the deck, his four arms reached forward and gripped the wicked crank.”

These three novellas show Golding at his playful, ironic and mysterious best. In ‘The Scorpion God’ we see the world of ancient Egypt at the time of the earliest pharaohs. ‘Clonk Clonk’ is a graphic account of a crippled youth’s triumph over his tormentors in a primitive matriarchal society. Finally, ‘Envoy Extraordinary’ is a tale of Imperial Rome, where the emperor loves his illegitimate, impractical grandson more than his arrogant, loutish but competent heir. The stories explore the mysteries of historical civilisations and illuminate our present – and our future.

Although these novellas were published together in 1971, they were written at different times in Golding’s life. The first draft of ‘The Scorpion God’ was completed after the publication of The Spire in 1964, but he re-wrote it several times over the following years. ‘Envoy Extraordinary’ had originally been published in 1956 in a fantasy volume called Sometime, Never, and Golding later adapted it into his play The Brass Butterfly. ‘Clonk Clonk’ was written specifically for this collection in the early part of 1971.

You might like The Double Tongue

If you enjoyed the varied historical worlds of The Scorpion God, you would appreciate The Double Tongue, which transports the reader back to Ancient Greece.

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  • Resource
    Pretty Flower

    Pretty Flower is the Pharaoh’s daughter in ‘The Scorpion God’. She is lauded for her beauty and has an elaborate silver...

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    The Booker Prize 1980

    On 21st October 1980, forty years ago today, William Golding was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage. Golding was 69...

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    Audio: Judy on The Scorpion God

    Golding’s daughter Judy Golding Carver introduces the three novellas which comprise The Scorpion God, which she calls ‘brilliantly funny’. William...

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    William Golding’s Early Life

    William Golding was born on 19th September, 1911, at his grandparents’ house in Newquay, Cornwall. The house, called Karenza – Cornish for ‘love’...