The Chrysalids | John Wyndham | Penguin

There is The Chrysalids, sitting on a shelf in the bookshop and I walked past it quite a few times, ignoring it.  

One day I took a closer look at the cover as something had been nagging at me.  Sure enough, the hand on the over had six fingers.  I picked up the book and turned it over to read the short description.  Mutation sounds awfully X-Men-ish.  I don't even know what chrysalid mean.  Still, it seemed interesting enough and I started to read the book.

Even though the word 'nuclear' never appeared in the book, it was rather patently clear that many generations ago there was a nuclear fallout, impacting livestock and nature.  Somehow, one community thought they were 'in the image of God' and that other beings (obviously) affected by nuclear radiation became mutated and 'different' and were 'blasphamy'.  This one community became intolerant of the 'defects' and infants were subject to checks before being issue a certicate certifying their 'normalness'.  Infants that did not receive a certificate were left to die.

Similar to Die letzen Kinder von Schewenborn, nuclear was never explicitly mentioned, yet the story focused on the group most innocent and most affected - infants and children who could neither protest their fates nor seek redress for themselves.

I'm not sure if John Wynham meant for The Chrysalids to be a criticism of fundamentalist Christianity, yet somehow, the character of David's father felt very similar in disposition to Joshua in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between - very old testament and intolerant of diverse opinions.

The Chrysalids is an interesting read, and I think I would rank it together with George Orwell's 1984 and  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World as books which should have been included in the reading lists for English.

I wonder if John Wyndham's concept in The Chrysalids is also a protest against the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but what perplexed me the most wass that in the midst of physical manifestations of the impact of nuclear radiation on physical deformaties, the group of children were 'mutants' that had the power of telepathy.

Still, I'm looking forward to exploring other stories written by John Wyndham.