The valley of life
Das Tal des Lebens is a novel by John Christopher , which was published in 1956 in the English-language original edition under the title The Death of Grass and in German in 1959 in the translation by Gerhard Thebs by Gebrüder Weiß Verlag .
It was made into a film in 1970 under the US film title No Blade of Grass .
The plot
The novel takes place at the time of its creation. A virus spreading from the Far East destroys all grass and grain seeds. Technicians and scientists only achieve sham successes in the fight against it. After China and other Asian countries, the catastrophe also hit Great Britain with full force, as its government is relying on a technical defense against the virus against the background of tactical election and profit-oriented speculations instead of decreeing the switch to potato cultivation in good time, and the other Anglo-Saxon countries from a certain one Point to place one's own well-being above one's blood brotherhood with the English. The protagonists of the novel, the London families of the engineer John Custance and the press officer Roger Buckley , flee at the last moment with the weapons dealer Henry Pirrie, who is well-versed in shooting, and his wife from the capital, in which public order will soon also be through the The military can no longer be sustained. The destination is the remote and closed-off farm Blind Gill (the valley of life ), which David , John's brother, runs. On the way there, adults soon begin to place short-term advantages even before the eyes of their children over the lives of some of their fellow citizens. But the Custances and Buckleys are also being robbed and raped themselves. They finally reach their destination with a larger group of people who have become homeless, but can only overcome the last few meters into the now fully occupied valley by force, as they have disregarded the advice of their academically educated brother that they should not leave too late .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christopher 1971