The original novel on which Sam Peckinpah's controversial movie Straw Dogs was based, and which has now been made into a brand-new movie by Rod Lurie, starring Alexander Skarsgård and Kate Bosworth - due for release in September 2011. American professor George Magruder, his wife Louise and their daughter rent an old, isolated house known as Trencher's Farm in Cornwall, so George can finish his book. When George accidentally runs over a convicted child killer on the loose from a mental asylum, he confronts the brutal locals and sets in train a series of violent events that threaten his very survival and that of his family.

本作が突きつけるのは、文明という薄皮を剥いだ先に潜む人間の根源的な野蛮さです。理性を重んじる学者が、閉鎖的な土地の暴力に晒され、家族を守るため「暴力の化身」へと変貌する過程は読者の倫理観を激しく揺さぶります。縄張り意識という動物的本能が理性を凌駕する瞬間の心理描写こそ、本書の文学的な真骨頂と言えるでしょう。 ペキンパー監督の映画版は衝撃的な暴力で有名ですが、原作には映像で描ききれない緻密な内面的葛藤と、静寂が恐怖に変わるまでの圧倒的な溜めが存在します。現代人が原始的な闘争へと引きずり込まれる様を克明に描いた本作は、映像とは異なる「精神が摩耗するような没入感」を読者にもたらす、真に恐ろしい傑作です。