The little hobbnix

The Little Hobbnix (English original title: The Soddit or Let's Cash In Again ) is a parody of JRR Tolkien's well-known novel The Little Hobbit, written by Adam Roberts under the pseudonym ARRR Roberts .

action

The Hobbnix Bingo bag grabber travels to the only mountain with a group of dwarves . However, the group gets smaller and smaller as the plot progresses, as one dwarf after the other is killed in various incidents. One of the dwarves is accidentally beheaded by the insane wizard Ganzalt while he is fighting against goblins ( turkey- like creatures). However, Bingo does not know why he is traveling with the dwarfs, as they do not want to tell him the destination of the journey and always make half-hearted hints of a treasure . On this journey, bingo becomes a hero because, among other things, he finds the "thing" that transforms everything that is talked through through it into the worst possible opposite. (In the original he finds a ring with completely different properties.)

Similar to the original, it belongs to a strange creature, the gloomy philosopher Schmollum. Other parallels are the capture by communist spiders. They can only escape death through the "thing".

The destination of the trip is the home of the dragon Schmauch, to which bingo comes through a chimney. In contrast to the Hobbit, the dwarves do not want to kill him, but give him Ganzalt to supervise, who should also turn into a dragon. Bingo is only told that after he visits the (friendly) Schmauch, who then flies to “Essmabrot”, the city on the lake, to clear up some misunderstandings. However, he is killed in the process.

At the end of the book there is a battle between goblins and the ( gay ) elves , the people from the town by the lake, bingo and the five remaining dwarfs. This battle is won by the goblins and everyone else surrenders. Instead of revealing the "thing", bingo gives the goblins a gem that they found at Schmauch. Shortly afterwards he speaks the word “ war ” through the “thing”, whereby all warring beings are killed, including the goblins who are killed by a hail of stones.

An important stylistic element of the parody is the Welsh dialect of the dwarfs, which was also taken into account in the German translation by Ute Brammertz as the “ German - Turkish ” youth language .

literature

• English: The Soddit or Let's Cash In Again . Orion Publishing Group, London 2003, ISBN 0-575-07554-6 .
• German: The little hobbnix. The Tolkien parody . Heyne, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3453879478 .