The Lost Traveller by Ruthven Todd
"The Lost Traveller" is a novel by Ruthven Todd that presents a surreal and fragmented narrative centered around Christopher Aukland, a young Englishman who experiences a bizarre journey following a wartime bomb blast in London. Upon regaining consciousness, he finds himself in a strange desert, characterized by warped perceptions of time and space, where he is unable to feel hunger or thirst, despite the oppressive sun overhead. As Christopher traverses this unsettling landscape, he encounters a peculiar city filled with deceptive architecture and encounters Omar, a city official who offers him employment. However, Christopher is determined to return to England with gemstones he discovered, leading to a series of conflicts with the city’s authorities.
The legal proceedings he faces are absurd, with Omar simultaneously serving as the magistrate and the city's god, maintaining the illusion of divine authority. Ultimately, Christopher is sentenced to a fool's quest for two mythical Great Awks, leading him on a disorienting journey at sea. The narrative culminates with Christopher's realization of his own identity as the last Great Awk, highlighting themes of absurdity, entrapment, and the struggle for autonomy in an irrational world. The novel’s exploration of these themes invites readers to reflect on the nature of reality and the quest for meaning amidst chaos.
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Subject Terms
The Lost Traveller
First published: 1943
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—magical world
Time of work: Contemporary
Locale: Various locations in a nightmarish world
The Plot
Ruthven Todd’s novel The Lost Traveller is best summarized as a series of vivid scenes linked by a thin plot thread. A young Englishman, Christopher Aukland, is knocked unconscious in wartime London by a bomb blast. He wakes up in a strange desert, shaded by ancient ruins and surrounded by lizards, snakes, and scorpions.
The desert he travels through is abnormal at best and nightmarish at worst. Christopher’s perceptions of time and space are warped: The more he walks, the farther away are objects in the distance; the sun is perpetually overhead, yet he feels no intense heat, nor does he feel hunger or thirst; and time seems to stand still.
Eventually, Christopher reaches a strange city—with concrete blocks disguised as houses, their windows, doors, and doorknobs painted on—hoping to find someone who can make sense of his situation. After a series of strange experiences, Christopher meets Omar, an official in the city government, who promises to employ the young man in the city. Christopher, however, wants nothing more than to take the gemstones he found in the desert back home to England, and he refuses the offer.
Christopher is taken by force to the city but is given comfortable if bizarre lodgings; he is even provided with a “first-class female,” Mali, who works days in the records office and works nights ministering to Christopher’s sexual desires. The promise of a job and Mali’s company do not content Christopher. In typically stolid English fashion, he repeatedly breaks town ordinances, which have been handed down as divine laws from the civic deity. Unable to convince the powers that be to give him passage to England, Christopher decides to escape. His attempt fails, and he finds himself on trial.
The legal system of the town is similarly irrational. At every stage of the trial, Christopher finds himself before Omar, who is first the magistrate, then the judge. Later, Christopher discovers that Omar is also the “god” of the city; he has won power by maintaining the illusion of a potent deity, whom he can control as its prophet. His verdict in Christopher’s trial is a pun on the man’s last name: He is sent on a fool’s quest to catch two Great Awks.
Eventually, Christopher is taken to a prison colony far to the north of the city, given an unstable boat without charts, and ordered to cast off. Christopher gives up his plan of sailing to England, because without charts the attempt would be suicidal, and he sets off to find an awk.
At sea, he upsets the boat and has to swim ashore. As in all of his other journeys, Christopher finds himself growing ever more tired but getting no closer to his goal, islands in the distance. He sees another boat behind him but is terrified. He keeps swimming, marvelling at his power and speed in the water.
Three men in the boat pull Christopher out of the water, bind him, and take him to a small hut. As winter winds blow fitfully outside, the men stare at him in fear and growing desperation. Unable to speak, Christopher can do nothing to calm the strange and violent men. In the book’s last scene, he watches one of the men approach him warily. Christopher finally looks down at his own body and recognizes that he is the last Great Awk and is about to be killed.