Okay, "rediscovered" is a misnomer because I've been a rabid fan since I first read Riddley Walker over twenty years ago, and my esteem only expanded when I discovered the guy's genius for kids' books. I'm not talking about Bread and Jam for Frances et al, though those are perfectly nice -- I'm talking How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen, which is among my top five of best illustrated books of all time and The Mouse and HIs Child, one of the most melancholy and Beckettian children's chapter books ever written.
But I actually meant to talk about The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, which was published 5 years after Mouse and 7 years before Walker and is technically Hoban's first book for adults, if you don't count Tom and Mouse, which are as much for adults as they are for kids (especially Tom, which every human should read at some point). The neat thing about Lion is that it plays with language in ways distinct from Walker, but which very much anticipates it. It's also fanciful and strange and beautiful in the way that all the best Hoban is. The lion of the title is a real lion, of sorts, in an unnamed land at an unnamed time when lions are extinct, which doesn't stop a father and son from being stalked/haunted/possessed by one. Reading it made me wonder if Jonathan Lethem had this book under his belt when he was writing about a tiger stalking NYC.