The Sound of His Horn

About This Book

Published in 1952, The Sound of His Horn is a dystopian novel by Sarban, the pen name of the British diplomat John William Wall (1910–1989). The story follows Alan Querdilion, a British naval officer captured during the Battle of Crete in World War II, who awakens to find himself in a world where Nazi Germany won the war — more than a century in the future.

Querdilion discovers he is trapped on the vast hunting estate of Count Hans von Hackelnberg, the Reich Master Forester, where the ruling class pursues a nightmarish sport: the hunting of human beings. Women have been surgically and genetically modified to resemble wild birds, and the sound of a hunting horn signals the start of each chase through dark forests. Querdilion must flee this estate or become prey himself.

Written in spare, evocative prose, the novel is one of the earliest works of fiction to explore genetic manipulation and remains one of the most disturbing alternate-history scenarios ever conceived. Kingsley Amis wrote the introduction to the 1970 reprint and the novel has appeared on multiple lists of the greatest fantasy novels. Wall, who served in the British diplomatic corps across the Middle East, published only a handful of fiction under the Sarban pseudonym. The Sound of His Horn is his most celebrated work.

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