Watership Down: A Novel by Richard Adams (Epub)

Description

A worldwide bestseller for more than forty years, Watership Down is the compelling tale of a band of wild rabbits struggling to hold onto their place in the world—“a classic yarn of discovery and struggle” (The New York Times).

Richard Adams’s Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in the Hampshire Downs in Southern England, an idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of “suspense, hot pursuit, and derring-do” (Chicago Tribune) follows a band of rabbits in flight from the incursion of man and the destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they travel forth from their native Sandleford warren through harrowing trials to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society. “A marvelous story of rebellion, exile, and survival” (Sunday Telegraph) this is an unforgettable literary classic for all ages.

User’s Reviews

Review “Spellbinding…Marvelous…A taut tale of suspense, hot pursuit and derring-do.” ― Chicago Tribune”A classic…A great book.” ― Los Angeles Times”Quite marvelous…A powerful new vision of the great chain of being.” ― New York Times Book Review“A classic yarn of discovery and struggle.” ― The New York Times“What a relief to read of characters who have honor and courage and dignity, who will risk their lives for others, whose love for their families and friends and community is enduring and effective” ― New York Review of Books

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Richard Adams used to make up stories about little bunnies for his daughters during long car rides in the English country. One day, infuriated at a lousy children’s book he bought, he considered: “I can do better than that”. The result is one of England’s most beloved young reader’s novels.The story of Watership Down, edited originally in 1972, starts when the rabbit Fiver begins to have visions showing a great catastrophe destroying his colony. “The field is full of blood”, he says. This trope is based on Cassandra’s myth, and much like the Greek prophetess, the little bunny’s visions are ignored by the leaders and only a small group decides to escape in search of a better place.When my girlfriend asks her English friends about Watership Down their expression shows love and fear at the same time. Love because the animal characters actions and personalities are built in a very endearing way by the author. Fear because the little furry creature’s deaths are many and bloody. Like all good children’s literature, Watership Down does not insult the young reader’s intelligence with simplified messages.The bunnies have anthropomorphic thoughts and can speak, but the book was built around real rabbit’s behavior, their organization, their ways of feeding, etc. It’s interesting how the author imagined how it would be a society of hunted creatures, instead of hunters like us. They are in a constant state of fear, always alert to any weird sound or noise.Adams also created a sort bunny speak, called “Lapine”, that even without the depth of other literary created languages like those made by Tolkien, has consistent prefixes and endings to convey and exotic but realistic tone. The rabbits also have a rich mythology with several stories intertwined.There is the solar god Fritz, the black rabbit Inlé (bringer of death), the primordial rabbit El-ahraiah and his many tales deceiving dogs or stealthily attacking gardens. The characters are very well constructed. Fiver is the prophet flirting with madness, Hazel the leader, Bigwig the warrior, Blackberry is pretty much the scientist, Dandelion is the bard, and entertains his friend with his tales. The book has a curious flavor, like a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean epic only with bunnies.One of the best books I have ever read. The ambience makes the reader really imagine how life is a few centimeters from the ground and think about how frail life is. And also about the number of stories that are hidden everywhere.

⭐ This book is sooo good. I’ve read it several times, most recently aloud to my two boys. It took us nearly a year to finish it, reading a chapter a week or so. The end is really good but so sad. Honestly, I was choking up a little bit, reading it to my kids. Had to focus hard to power through and keep my voice steady, so they wouldn’t see their dad cry! (Haha) Its a timeless classic. Highly recommended!

⭐ The Bible often equates people to sheep, and is full of stories and legends, which convey some wisdom or truth. Adams book is similar. It is a story about rabbits,true but it is also clearly a great model for the way humans express fear and faith in the stressful circumstances of life. Most notable are the great lapine legends and the language used to express those stories and ideas and motivate the characters. We do this as humans, finding comfort and courage in such stories.The basic ideals of a free society are found in this book. This great assumption that rabbits/people are created by a divine creator and guided by said creator and given the parameters of free will; and that within those parameters we choose virtuous or ignoble paths for ourselves is implicit and pervasive throughout.Every young adult should be required to read this book in the compulsory school system, if you want them to understand some basic principals of western, free civilizations, from whence spring the greatest innovations, aspirations, and hopes of mankind. If you read this story and don’t feel for these rabbits as if they were people you knew, well then you have surely missed something.It is a great story of hope, life, faith, inner strength and deep convictions. Adams did his research well to show an accurate portrait of the habits of rabbits, but also captured the nature of man equally well. This book has many rich layers of meaning, and the descriptions of the countryside are vivid. This is a great book also for anyone aspiring to write quality fiction.

⭐ As a high schooler back in the late 1970s, I was enthralled with Watership Down.’ Now in my late fifties, I wondered if Mr. Adams’s classic work still had the same affect on me. Literature is a living thing. Experiencing a certain piece of art such as a novel at different times in your life will usually bring out new meanings and emotions for the reader. The rabbits in ‘Watership Down’ don’t wear clothes or drive off to the market. The author attempts to give a closer representation of their naturally actions but allows them more complex thoughts than rabbits would actually have. The reader will be exposed to a mixture of reality, a few otherworldly visions, and political oppression. Somehow it all works.The main protagonists are three rabbits: Hazel, Bigwig, and Fiver. There are quite a few other animals that play important roles, but are secondary in importance to the three mentioned. While the rabbits do experience many hardships and challenges in the novel, their main antagonist shows up in the latter part of the story. His name is General Woundwart and the guy is a fearsome foe with serious tyrannical issues. The reader will come to appreciate the challenges of being an animal near the bottom of the food chain. Death comes quickly and unexpectedly in the novel. ‘Watership Down’ is not a little kid’s book. It also includes some entertaining fairy tales told by one of the rabbits. Female characters get very little attention in the book. The story is heavily androcentric. Each chapter begins with a brief quote, verse, or poem which I found annoying. Some of the quotes are not in English, so unless you’re multilingual, get ready to use translation software.The novel is a nice balance between suspenseful and peaceful episodes. The last third of the story, however, kicks into high gear with plenty of tension. I truly hoped the ‘Watership Down’ rabbits would come out alright, but Mr. Adams set it up so you aren’t sure until the climax. The story occurs during the summer months and seems like an appropriate beach read. Good luck ever wanting to eat rabbit after reading this one.

⭐ I am an avid reader and found this one incredibly boring. I have to agree with the publishers who rejected it: Older children won’t like it, nor will younger ones. Why so many adults have given it high praise is a mystery to me, for I found it choppy and repetitive, not to mention just plain weird. I have persevered, only because I’m reading it to my elderly mother, but I could only endure a chapter or two at a time. In my opinion it’s not a page turner, that’s for sure, but everybody’s different. I’ve seen comments on other negative reviews that have said, “You just don’t understand it.” The author himself stated that it wasn’t an allegory, so what’s to understand? It’s simply a very boring story about rabbits. I actually don’t mind allegorical stories with talking animals, such as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” but this is another thing altogether.

⭐ Beautiful edition. The cover it’s soft matte (very nice texture) and has gold ink and UV coating varnish on the rabbit picture. Inside you will find a well detailed contents, a map with the story references marked and even a lapine glosary (of rabbit languaje).I’m really happy with this edition even though I was hopping another cover behind the dust jacket… there’s no dust jacket. I had that hope due to a review and pictures of customer Amy D. It’s not the same product she bought. But this one it’s very nice too.Also it arrive on time, I have just one complaint: the package. My book arrive with a little damage in one corner and for some weird reason have mild wrinkles in a few pages, but that’s it. Check pictures to see what I mean.

⭐ LOVED this book. There are very few novels that I ever read, probably about 2% of all my reading content, but this one was brilliant. I had first read this in the first couple years it came out but now with the death of the author I felt compelled to revisit it. What a joy to be with Hazel ,Fiver, Bigwig and Kehaar again. I love the style of writing although I did tend to skim over the landscape descriptions and the rabbit fairy tales. The lapine vocabulary was difficult to remember and mildy annoying to keep looking up the meanings. Those however were my only quibbles. Sometimes I really get the impression that British authors are really among the best on earth. This book was a gem and very engrossing. Knowing I had a flight coming up, I deliberately saved the battle scene (Efrafans versus Honeycomb) for the plane and sure enough, the flight passed very quickly and pleasantly. Be warned this is no “cute little bunnies” story, it is grim and gritty at times and mostly deals with male rabbits (who ,among other adventures, search to find females with which to populate their warren and so continue their legacy) Not recommended for young children. I’m hoping the new Watership Down movie due next year will do this book justice and keep the grittiness, the battle scenes and the brilliant dialogue.

⭐ Everyone should read this when they are a child, around age 9 through 12. They should re-read it in their high school years. Then again as a young adult, and perhaps again as a mature adult. At each stage, you’ll get a bit more out of it. The original version of the animated film (NOT the computer animated version–sorry) is also beautiful–a true work of art in its own right. Both the book and the original film are indispensable as experiences of late childhood (like seeing “The Nutcracker” ballet, live), and reveal more of their depth, progressively, as one matures. Watership Down is the story of an epic journey, and of one generation’s sacrifice for the sake of their progeny. We think of rabbits as the prototypical fast-breeding mammal, that simply produces masses of offspring without caring about the future of any individual one. Perhaps this is true in the real world. But Watership Down turns this perception on its head, giving rabbits a kind of nobility that very few humans would possess. The underground world versus the surface world, the potential predators and dangers, the politics of various rabbit groups, subgroups and castes, if you will; the shadowy, remote and threatening, unseen human beings–all of it is there, opening to us an unglimpsed and wonderful world. The book even features a glossary of unfamiliar terms from the rabbits’ own vocabulary, such as “silflay” (I’ll let you look it up). It’s virtually a Lord of the Rings for the diminutive and furry set.

⭐ Watership Down is an incredible adventure of Hazel, a rabbit, forced to take an epic journey across the countryside to find a new home along with a band of misfits and unlikely adventurers. On the way they must continually use their cunning to protect themselves from predators, humans, and even other rabbits. It is emotionally touching, briskly adventurous, and very, very human – like all good animal stories are.This was the kind of adolescent fiction that we have become accustomed to today – insightful, entertaining, and challenging. But it was written before the modern adolescent fiction explosion, and as such, I think it has largely been missed and overlooked (unless it is taught in the classroom, which it is in many high schools).With Richard Adam’s death in 2016, the novel has again gained more public notice. If you haven’t read this, I encourage you to grab it and read it. It is one of those stories that I read many, many years ago for the first time and I still remember how it gripped my imagination and impacted my heart. There are a lot of good stories out there. This isn’t one of them – this is one of the great ones.

⭐ The definitive illustrated version of Watership Down by Richard Adams.I highly recommend this book for parents and grandparents as well as leaders that want to help themselves or a younger generation. A tale of teamwork, leadership, hope, overcoming adversity, and a book that young as well as adults like me will enjoy. One of my favorite books and one of Stephen King’s favorite books as well.

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