Book description
It is the rainy season. Drunk and delirious, an old man lies dying in
the Queensland bush. In his opium-hazed last hours, a priest finds his
deserted shack and listens to his last words. Half-awake and
half-dreaming the old man tells the story of an adventure set decades in
the future, in a very different world... 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).
