A surprising success

Watership Down is the story of a colony of rabbits that suddenly decide to flee their peaceful warren in Berkshire Downs after Hazel, a rabbit known for his visions, foresees impending doom.

Somehow, the rabbits trust Hazel’s visions and believe them to be true.

They can’t read the sign that heralds a housing development in the area. They simply have faith in Hazel.

The rabbits’ journey to find a new home takes them to unfamiliar territory filled with terror as they encounter bad dogs, frightening humans, giant rabbits and other problems.

Through it all, Hazel offers visions that perplex the rabbits while propelling them forward. Together, the rabbits function as a community trying desperately to find a peaceful place to live.

Long before environmental issues became the fashion, Adams penned this profoundly heartbreaking novel that shows just how animals — and indeed all of us — suffer when we don’t take care of the environment.

Like the rabbits in his novel, Adams crossed many boundaries. In his case, they happened to be literary boundaries. Because it is a fable, Watership Down can be considered a children’s novel as well as a Young Adult (YA) novel. Fables cross boundaries quite easily.

Watership Down’s success turned out to be both extraordinary and surprising.

The glowing tributes that poured in after his death pointed out that Adams’ was an unknown civil servant in London before the publication of this novel.

Adams wrote government reports on the environment and spun children’s stories for his children whenever they went on long rides through the countryside.

At 50, he turned the stories from those rides and his love for the countryside into Watership Down, which he set in Berkshire Downs, the place where he grew up.

Publishing houses did not leap at the chance to publish Adams’ novel.

Only a small publishing house Rex Collings Ltd, took a chance on printing a paltry 2,500 copies in 1971.

British critics loved Watership Down, comparing it George Orwell’s Animal Farm; JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

Like The Hobbit, Watership Down often features its own language.

A year after its release, Penguin issued the novel in its Puffin Books children’s series.

Watership Down won the Carnegie Medal in Literature in 1972 and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 1973.

Watership Down has a special place in my heart because it was one of the first books I read to my 11-year-old students in their library class.

My students loved this novel so much, they rushed to the library for me to read to them during their break and most lunch periods.

I had a difficult time getting them to leave the library to go to class. Many students also re-read the chapters I read to them in class with their parents.

Watership Down is truly a remarkable piece of literature.

It’s one of those books that makes you think about the world around you in a whole new light. It’s an unforgettable read – the kind that makes you feel like there’s a hole in your life if you never had the opportunity to experience this novel.