Nevil Shute

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Nevil Shute (1949)

Nevil Shute Norway (born January 17, 1899 in Ealing , London , † January 12, 1960 in Melbourne , Australia ) was an English writer , aircraft engineer and pilot.

Life

Norway took part in World War II as Commander of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and as an engineer he was involved in several secret aeronautical engineering projects.

After the war he emigrated to Australia and settled near Melbourne in 1950. There he was instrumental in founding several airlines. In addition to his literary work, he occasionally worked as an expert in the aviation industry. In Australia, Norway also changed the genre and now increasingly wrote SF novels under the pseudonym Nevil Shute .

His best-known novel On The Beach , German: The Last Shore , was also made into a film under the same title (for the film, see article The Last Shore ). In this work Norway uses two couples to describe the last days of mankind after a nuclear war. Despite the impending doom, these people await their fate calmly, almost stoically.

With Slide rule (In the gliding flight of life) Norway presented his autobiography in 1954, which in the following year a. a. has been translated into German.

Nevil Shute Norway died at the age of 61 on January 12, 1960 at Freemason Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

Works

Each with a short summary.

Before World War II

  • Stephen Morris , 1923, published 1961 by Heinemann, London (his first pilot novel)
  • Pilotage , 1924, published in 1961 with Stephen Morris , Heinemann, London (continuation by Stephen Morris ).
  • Marazan , Cassell 1926 (thriller, pilot helps fugitive who rescues him from distress at sea to blow up his brother's drug ring)
  • So Disdained , Cassell 1928 (Pilot betrays his country by working for the Russians; topics also include socialism and fascism, emerged under the impression of the general strike of 1926 in Great Britain and the emerging fascism in Italy)
  • Lonely Road , Heinemann 1932 (thriller about communist arms smugglers with sympathizers in English universities, combined with a love story, filmed in the USA in 1936 as Scotland Yard commands )
  • Ruined City , 1938, in the US Kindling. (A banker uses financial tricks to build a shipyard on the edge of legality. He is jailed for fraud, but the shipyard flourishes. In Shute's own experience, while trying to start a company to build aircraft.)
  • An Old Captivity , Heinemann 1940 (while taking aerial photos over Greenland, a pilot's imagination, triggered by drugs he has taken, is transported back to the Viking Age)

During or shortly before World War II

  • What Happened to the Corbetts , Heinemann 1938, in the USA Ordeal (predicts the bombing of Southampton)
  • Landfall: A Channel Story , 1940 (young Royal Air Force pilot accused of sinking his own submarine)
  • Pied Piper , William Morrow 1942 (an elderly Briton, on vacation in France, saves seven children from France during the German occupation with a fishing boat, with the German commander helping him if he takes his orphaned niece, who has a Jewish mother, with him, 1942 and filmed in 1990, the latter film for CBS with Peter O'Toole in the lead role)
  • Pastoral , William Morrow 1944 (Events between soldiers and the local population at a rural airport in England during the war)
  • Most Secret , 1942, only published in 1945 by Pan Books (British naval officers commanding German troops with a French fishing boat)
  • The Checker Board , Heinemann 1947 (soldier who did not have long to live after an airplane accident, made contact with three former comrades during the war, whereby the relations between US soldiers and the British were also discussed)
  • The Seafarers , 1946-7, published in 2000 (short story, love story between a naval officer and a naval helper from different social classes)

Australia

  • No Highway , Heinemann 1948 (fatigue fracture in an airplane, predicted by an eccentric scientist; joined Comet a few years later in 1954 )
  • A Town Like Alice , Heinemann 1950, in the USA The Legacy (lovers meet first in Japanese captivity and later in Australia in a small outback town that the protagonist wants to transform into a town like Alice Springs with the help of an inheritance)
  • Round the Bend , Heinemann 1951 (two pilots friend, one of whom set up a cargo airline in the Asia-Pacific region after the Second World War and the other becomes his employee and is a religious guru in different cultures; among other things, the plot takes place in Bahrain, Bali, Cambodia, Indonesia; Nevil Shute himself thought this was his best novel)
  • The Far Country , Heinemann 1952 (young woman visits Australia and finally immigrates, with criticism of the British Labor government of the time and the public health system of Great Britain and Australia; she meets a Czech immigrant who is a doctor but is not allowed to practice and financed his immigration with two years of work in a logging camp)
  • In the Wet , Heinemann 1953 (an Anglican priest tells the story of a dying Australian pilot he cared for in the Australian bush with criticism of the British Labor Party and prospects for the 1980s, introduced in the novel as drug-induced visions)
  • Requiem for a Wren , Heinemann 1955, in the USA The Breaking Wave (her diary tells the story of a former British naval helper, a Wren , who emigrated to Australia after the Second World War and apparently committed suicide)
  • Beyond the Black Stump , Heinemann 1956 (love story of a US geologist in Australia with the daughter of a farmer in the Australian bush and at the same time a comparison of an Australian pioneer family with a US middle class family)
  • On the Beach , 1957 (the people of Melbourne await their demise after an outbreak of nuclear war)
  • The Rainbow and the Rose , Heinemann 1958 (pilot dying after a plane crash remembers his relationships with women)
  • Trustee from the Toolroom , Heinemann 1960 (recovery of diamonds from a sailing boat wreck)

Others

  • Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer , 1954 (his autobiography)

German translations

  • Diamonds in the Sea , 1961, Goldmann 1972 (Trustee from the Toolroom)
  • El Amin, the Prophet (1952) (Round the Bend)
  • Henry Warren's Transformation , Steinberg 1957 (Ruined City)
  • In the Far Country , 1953, Rowohlt 1989 (The Far Country)
  • In the glide of life , Steinberg Verlag, Zurich 1955 (Slide Rule)
  • On behalf of a third party , joke 1954 (So disdained)
  • Chains that don't break 1956, Lübbe 1976 (An old captivity)
  • The Last Shore , Desch 1958, Rowohlt 1989 (On the Beach)
  • Girls from the steppe , Desch 1957 (Beyond the black stump)
  • Pastorale (1945) (Pastoral), also as The Couple in the Sun , Benziger 1972
  • The Queen's Pilot , Steinberg Verlag 1955 (In the wet)
  • The Rose and the Rainbow , Desch 1959 (The Rainbow and the Rose)
  • Schach dem Schicksal , Steinberg Verlag 1948 (The Checker Board)
  • Marazan , Steinberg 1958, also as a shadow over Marazan at the Gutenberg Book Guild 1958 (Marazan)
  • Painful Melodie , Desch 1955 (translated by Franziska Becker ), also Forgotten Melodie , Benziger 1975 (Requiem for a Wren)
  • A town like Alice , first 1950, many editions, including Rowohlt 1992 (A town like Alice)
  • Die Straße fern , Steinberg 1950 (No Highway)
  • Top Secret , Steinberg Verlag, Zurich 1946 (Most Secret)
  • End of loneliness , Zurich, Benziger 1977, also as Lonely Path , A. Müller (Lonely Road)
  • Mr. Howard and the children , Swiss printing and publishing company 1945, Rüschlikon-Zurich, Vienna, Stuttgart, A. Müller 1967 (Pied Piper)
  • With bright courage , Rüschlikon-Zürich u. a., A. Müller 1963 (landfall)

Film adaptations

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Shute, Nevil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Norway, Nevil Shute (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer, aircraft engineer and pilot
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Ealing
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1960
Place of death Melbourne