Watership Down is the greatest fiction book ever written

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I just finished Watership Down last night after having it on my bookshelf for over 4 years (dyslexic so dont judge me), and by God it easily ranks as the greatest fiction book ive ever read in my life (that said I haven't read many fiction books as I want to given my dyslexia, but ive read my fair albeit modest sample of fiction books). The story is epic, taut, suspenseful and exhilarating in ways not even a horror story can ever rival, every character is compelling and enjoyable, the main character is probably one of the greatest main characters in fiction, and somehow the author of this epic story somehow was able to concoct a legendary epic about the exploits of........rabbits. Yes, literal rabbits and their rabbit exploits spawned and epic adventure that surpasses even the greatest epics of Western canon, the Odyssey and Illiad.

10/10 book would recommend to anyone

I agree, it's one I return to over and over. I also think it's one of the greatest examples of a constructed mythology - I mean the rabbits own mythology of Frith and the black rabbit of Inle and all the stories around them and el-ehrairah. It's a really hard thing to pull off in fiction but all that stuff sounds authentic to me.

And Woundwort is surely one of the foremost psychotics in fiction.

Woundwort's movie version gave me PTSD as a kid:



It boggles my mind how Richard Adams was able to make a rabbit villain so damn badass and intimidating

Oh me too. But I was more affected by Fiver's visions, the field of blood and the bit where Captain Holly shows up in the ditch and describes the destruction of the Warren. The music in those sections is absolute nightmare fodder. In the UK this film somehow got a U certificate - appropriate for all ages!

Surprisingly, I still haven't read it. But thanks for the thoughtful post and recommendation

Funny enough my interest in Watership down started with the whole hype about how Watership Down is rated U for kids of all ages only to be darker than a rated R film. That hype and sensationalism surrounding the discrepancy of the film's rating with the film's actual content was what drew me in intrigued and on the hype train to shock myself from the shock factor of such an absurdly morbid and grotesque film, but upon the hype wearing off I began to inspect the story more soberly and realized it is actually a pretty solid and mature story. The book however was infinitely better since it gave more character development to the side characters, fleshed out the world building more with numerous stories of El-Ahrairah's exploits, especially those with Rabscuttle and King Darzin, and the escape from Efrafa felt much more harrowing and suspenseful in the book than it did in the movie.

I enjoyed the movie. Never read the book. I just don't have the time. It's so much easy to watch a movie.

I have dyslexia so I can understand, but having finally finished the book yesterday after 4 years of it being on my shelf I can assure you the book is 10,000 times better than the movie, easily.

While not my absolute favourite novel of all time, Watership Down is also up there for me. I also really liked the mythology segments, and the stuff the characters had to go through was a lot more than what you would expect from "a story about rabbits finding a new home". And Woundwort... yikes. While at the time of reading I didn't truly grasp the extent of his issues, he was still deeply disturbing to me due to running Efrafra that way.

I've read it twice. I didn't really understand it when I was 8 and got a totally different experience reading it when I was older.

Now I have pet rabbits. They don't have visions as far as I know.