- published: 22 Jun 2016
- views: 6845
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language (Lapine), proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel recounts the rabbits' odyssey as they escape the destruction of their warren to seek a place in which to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
The novel takes its name from the rabbits' destination, Watership Down, a hill in the north of Hampshire, England, near the area where Adams grew up. The story is based on a collection of tales that Adams told to his young children to pass the time on trips to the countryside.
Published in 1972, Watership Down was Richard Adams' first novel, and is by far his most successful to date. Although it was initially rejected by 13 publishers before eventually being accepted by Rex Collings Ltd, Watership Down has never been out of print, and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. It is Penguin Books' best-selling novel of all time, and has been adapted into an acclaimed classic film and a television series. In 1996, Adams published Tales from Watership Down, a follow-up collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.
There's a house down on the corner
That we always used to talk about
Never had the guts to go inside
Not even on a dare
Boarded up and creepy
Scary eyes looked out upon a sleepy town
Fascination kept us guessin'
Why the sign read to beware?
We always knew just
What would hit the fan
If we got an up close look
At the boogie man
Shadows on the wall
Voices in the hall, oh, yeah
There's more than just a mouse
In the Zavelow House
Zavelow, Zavelow, Zavelow, yo
I could look inside the window
If I jumped upon my trampoline
Could've sworn I saw Hannibal Lichter
With a hatchet and a head
Not the kind of place you'd see
In Better Homes and Gardens magazine
Unless they did an expose
On the night of the living dead
But with a pretty girl
To hold my hand
Could've got an up close look
At the boogie man
Yeah, shadows on the wall
Voices in the hall, oh, yeah
There's more than just a mouse
In the Zavelow House
Oh, Zavelow, woah
But with a pretty girl
To hold my hand
Could've got an up close look
At the boogie man
Yeah, shadows on the wall
Voices in the hall, oh, yeah
There's more than just a mouse
In the Zavelow House
Yeah, shadows on the wall
Voices in the hall, oh, yeah
There's more than just a mouse
In the Zavelow House
(Zavelow, Zavelow, Zavelow)