Book description
A young English woman leaves her ageing parents to visit friends living
in the Australian outback. She falls in love, both with the country and
with Carl, a doctor and Czech refugee. Brought together through dramatic
encounters and strange twists of fate, their relationship hangs in the
balance when Jennifer is called back to England. Nevil Shute Norway
was born on 17 January 1899 in Ealing, London. After attending the
Dragon School and Shrewsbury School, he studied Engineering Science at
Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an aeronautical engineer and
published his first novel,
Marazan,
in 1926. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they went on to
have two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy
Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After
the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived
until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include
Pied Piper
(1942), No Highway
(1948), A Town Like Alice
(1950) and On the
Beach
(1957).
