The Motto of the novel comes from the “Agamemnon” of Aeschylus (“The house evaporated after death and dripping blood”), already on the second page, a footnote informed the reader that rabbits could “to four. Any number above four is Hrair – ,a lot‘“, and this is only the beginning of a lot of hundred side of the story, which is a Philology of the rabbit language, as well as a multi-layered representation of the rodent religion.
What exactly he had to do it with this novel, was not an early reader, the publisher, Rex Collings, quite clear: A children’s rabbit book about speaking – but the thing for young readers was not much to brutal? A natural history work, based on close observation of the object, but the representation of a rabbit faith is not plentiful speculative? An allegorical work perhaps – but an allegory for what? No wonder that is “Watership Down” was rejected by numerous helpless publishers.
Collings brought out the book in 1972, however, and celebrated with, up to today, worldwide, there are about fifty million copies sold, a Triumph, an animated film adaptation, which came out in 1978 into the cinemas. It holds, Essentially, in the novel’s plot, as far as one can tell in ninety minutes of film: The psychics and rabbit boy Fiver not suspect that the master is in his familiar terrain – in fact, people are already ready to want to build there and back before the animals with poison gas in the body. A few animals, including a fiver’s brother, Hazel, to take seriously the warning and move away secretly.
On your hike, you encounter another of the rabbit tribe that is ruled according to the leader principle, and as a large prison is. In the end it comes to battle, the Hazel, Fiver, your strong Companion, Bigwig and their friends. Finally, a mythical rabbit knocks the aged Hazel and takes him to the Afterlife, which in turn, have provided the readers some of the material for interpretation of the entire novel.
These days have discovered the daughters of the just under two years ago, on Christmas eve, 2016, the dead author’s word – not without reason, for a remake of the series by the BBC is on the verge of the Christmas broadcast, before you can be seen on Netflix.