Strandloper (novel)
Cover to the first edition
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| Author | Alan Garner |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | The Harvill Press |
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Publication date
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May 1996 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 199 pp (hardback edition) & 208 pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | (hardback edition) & ISBN (paperback edition) |
| OCLC | 35113032 |
| 823/.914 21 | |
| LC Class | PR6057.A66 S77 1996 |
Strandloper is a novel by English writer Alan Garner, published in 1996. It is loosely based on the story of a Cheshire labourer, William Buckley. The historical figures of Edward Stanley and John Batman also appear as characters in the novel.
In 1803, William Buckley is a young member of a working-class farming family in Cheshire. Along with the rest of his community he participates in ancient folk rituals which exist alongside, and encompass, the local Christian church. An epileptic, William is prone to dreams and visions, seeing patterns in his hallucinations (some of which he does not recognise). At the same time, William is being taught to read by the young son of the local land-owning family, Edward, who has an interest in spreading literacy among the working class and who sees him as both friend and test subject. Both men have a close relationship with William’s fiancée, Esther.
Edward’s father, Sir John Stanley, sees both working-class literacy and community rituals as threats to property, order and hierarchy. Outlawing the rituals under property laws, he ensures that William is convicted on a trumped-up charge of trespass. William is taken to London for punishment, vowing to Esther that he will return to her. Accompanied by assorted convicts (who, like him, are from disadvantaged working-class groups including Cockneys and Irish labourers) he is then transported to Australia.
On arrival at the Australian settlement, William becomes part of an escape attempt of which he is the only survivor and the only successful escapee. Given the opportunity to return, he determines to remain a free man in the wilderness, no longer trusting his own society’s values (including its promises and punishments). After wandering for days, surviving wildfires and privations, he eventually collapses from exhaustion in the outback on the grave of an Aboriginal shaman. He is discovered by aborigines of the Beingalite people, who regard him as the reincarnation of their shaman Murrangurk, an idea reinforced by William's epilepsy.
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