LS 5623 Advanced Literature for Young Adults

Pratchett, Terry. 2008. Nation. Harper Collins: New York.
ISBN 9780061433016


A tsunami devastates the island Nation and leaves the shipwrecked Sweet Judy washed far ashore. Mau, who had been away from the island performing the ritual to become a man, is now the only survivor of his tribe, and he is stuck in the limbo between boyhood and manhood. Daphne, the only survivor of the Sweet Judy, is unaware that she is also one of the last of her family, as the hundred or so people who needed to die in order for her father to inherit the crown have all in fact died in a plague that swept England. Together, these two must bind together and learn how to start over when everything has been taken away. Taking care of the strangers that appear periodically on the island and fighting off raiders, together everyone forms a new Nation.

This novel contains every conflict that can exist in a novel. Man versus man, man versus nature, man versus self, man versus maker, man versus society. Pratchett really makes us question what one should do when simply everything one knows is stripped away. Instead of turning the Nation into an island of boys gone mad like Golding, Pratchett gives us Mau, who gives rights to the dead, focuses on the things he needs to survive, and who defies the gods that demand he act in ways that he sees no reason in. He also gives us Daphne, who while also trying to find her way also, amusingly at times, tries to cling to the standards of British society. Readers will smile at the absurdity of having a dead man as a chaperone.

Readers of Pratchett's Discworld series will recognize the wit and humor that must pervade all of his novels. Particularly funny are the regurgitating Grandfather birds and the Monty Python-esque Gentlemen of Last Resort. But more than witty, readers will be challenged to think on the relationship between God and Man, on science, on what really constitutes a civilized society, and on who you really are when all things are stripped away. As one reviewer for VOYA put it in 2008, "There is a lot going on in the novel-this reviewer could not help feeling as if she were missing something-but there is something to be said for Pratchett's respect for the young reader whom he imagines can keep up with and find pleasure in the difficult worlds he creates." Recommended for 9th grade and up. 





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