Clonk Clonk is one of three novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s by William Golding

William Golding

Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...

, published together under the title The Scorpion God

The Scorpion God

The Scorpion God is a novella by William Golding, published in a collection of the same name, along with Clonk Clonk and Envoy Extraordinary ....

in 1971.

Clonk Clonk is set in pre-historic Africa - some 70,000 years ago. A tribe lives under the heat of the African Sun. The men and women live largely separate lives, with the women taking the lead and the men being seen as stupid and reckless.