Watership Down
Richard Adams · 1972
An epic fantasy told entirely through rabbits, complete with its own mythology (*El-ahrairah*), sociology, and politics. Adams's refugee narrative is a powerful allegory that never draws attention to itself as allegory.
The case against
Adams builds his bucks a mythology, a language, and individual souls, then writes every doe as breeding stock; the entire Efrafa campaign is a quest to acquire females, who arrive with barely a personality among them. Epigraphs from Aeschylus and Clausewitz announce large ambitions, and the rabbit politics mostly earn them. The sexual politics were creaky in 1972; time has not been kind.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
