Chequer Board - Softcover

Shute, Nevil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345271874 ISBN 13: 9780345271877

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1969

Synopsis

John Turner, who has had a head injury in an air crash, is told that he has only a year to live. He decides to spend his last months making the journey to Rangoon, Burma, in a flying boat to rescue a friend who has gone native.

About this title

About the Author:

Nevil Shute Norway was born in London and worked as an aeronautical engineer at Vickers before setting up his own airship company. Worried that his reputation as a fiction writer would damage his engineering career, he wrote without using his surname. He served in both world wars and was a commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in World War II, working on secret projects. After the war he became a full time author completing a fictionalised account of his war time experience in 'Most Secret'. Moving to Australia in 1949 he based seven of his novels against that background including his most successful title On The Beach. This was subsequently a hugely successful film starring Gregory Peck, Antony Perkins and Ava Gardner and became arguably the major after the bomb movie of all time. Shute became one of the top selling authors of the 50s and 60s with wide appeal to a broad international market attracted by strong story lines which were always meticulously researched..

Review:

"Not only a brilliantly fluent storyteller but also an ironic commentator on the world scene" * Harpers & Queen * "Shute was a brilliant storyteller and a terrific example for any writer" -- Gerald Seymour * Daily Express * "As a novelist, Nevil Shute goes from strength to strength, experimenting, drawing out life as he sees it, and setting it before us in ordered pattern...The Chequer Board is a notable novel" * Punch * "Blessed with an unaffected poplar touch, Shute has come close to the sentiment of his readers not only through a very genuine quality of sympathy but also through a singular ease and liveliness of topical invention...he is a storyteller of an uncommonly veracious stamp, whose performance is more remarkable that his quiet and refreshing modest airs might suggest" * Times Literary Supplement * "A happy knack endows this story with a character who is slightly greater than life-size. It proves once again how the ordinary, the average, the season-ticket holder sitting next to you, can still, in the hands of an expert, furnish the very stuff of literature" -- John Pudney * Daily Express *

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1969
• ISBN 10: 0345271874
• ISBN 13: 9780345271877
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1