Strandloper is a novel by English writer Alan Garner

Alan Garner

With his first book published, Garner abandoned his work as a labourer and gained a job as a freelance television reporter, living a "hand to mouth" lifestyle on a "shoestring" budget...

, published in 1996. It is based on the story of a Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

 labourer, William Buckley

William Buckley (convict)

William Buckley was an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years....

.

Plot summary

Buckley was convicted on a trumped-up charge of trespass in 1803 and transported to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, where he escapes, only to collapse from exhaustion in the outback on the grave of an Aboriginal shaman. He is discovered by aborigines

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

, who regard him as the reincarnation of Murrangurk the shaman, an idea reinforced by Will's epilepsy

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...

. Will learns their language and ways, and fits perfectly the role of their healer and holy man. Thirty years later he intervenes to prevent the slaughter of a group of English soldiers and is granted a pardon. He returns to his native Cheshire, where in a closing sequence he dances Aborigine style across his home land, fulfilled and transformed.

Major themes

The book is rich in idiom, folk expressions and word play, as well as aboriginal motifs both visual and conceptual. Time is treated as cyclic, not linear, and experience is approached in immediate terms rather than preconceived constructs. The landscape of Cheshire and his life there live in Will's mind as an anchor of memory that he never forsakes. His return home is an overwhelming experience.

Literary significance & criticism

The book is seen by critics of Garner's work as related in style and structure to Red Shift

Red Shift (novel)

Red Shift is a fantasy novel by Alan Garner. It spans over a thousand years but one geographical area: Southern Cheshire, England. Garner evokes the essence of place, allowing his characters to echo each other through time, as if their destinies may be predefined by the soil on which they walk...

(1973) and Thursbitch

Thursbitch

Thursbitch is a novel by English writer Alan Garner, named after the valley in the Pennines of England where the action occurs...

(2003). In all three time is fragmented, since it is approached through the characters' inner lives in terms of both memory and experience, and it is their idea of their identity that shapes the experience.