Lord of the Flies from 1923 to 2005. Published in 1954, "Lord of the Flies" was Golding's first novel. Although it did not have great success after being released—selling fewer than three thousand copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print—it soon went on to become a best-seller. It has been adapted to film twice in English, in 1963 by Peter Brook and 1990 by Harry Hook, and once in Filipino by Lupita A. Concio (1975). The book takes place in the midst of an unspecified war. Some of the marooned characters are ordinary students, while others arrive as a
Lord of the World is not as well known as the dystopian writings of Evgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, "Lord of the World" continues to have many admirers—especially among Conservative and Traditionalist Catholics. In a 2005 essay, Joseph Pearce wrote that, while Orwell and Huxley's novels are "great literature", they "are clearly inferior works of prophecy." Pearce explains that while "the political dictatorships" that inspired Huxley and Orwell "have had their day", "Benson's novel-nightmare... is coming true before our very eyes." Pearce elaborates, The world depicted in "Lord of the World" is one where creeping secularism and godless humanism have triumphed over