Archaelogist Rebecca Wragg-Sykes has included Golding’s 1955 novel The Inheritors in Five Books. Each interviewee chooses five books on a particular theme, and Wragg-Sykes focuses on five that imagine Neanderthals. Her first choice is The Inheritors, which she describes as ‘a lovely book’, and the ‘foundational text for the literary history of’ Neanderthals. The Inheritors was Golding’s favourite out of all his novels, and Wragg-Sykes highlights the beauty of language, and the power of Golding’s imagination. Her other choices are The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Last Neanderthal, The Naked Neanderthal, The Seventh Son and an unexpected sixth – Life as Told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal.
Wragg-Sykes’s own work, including Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death & Art, is outstanding, and highly recommended.