Round the Bend is a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.
The novel, written in the first person, adopts the voice and eyes of Tom Cutter, an aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur.
The novel starts with Cutter's boyhood—he gets a job with the Alan Cobham "National Aviation Day" flying circus, of barnstorming aircraft which take customers up for short joyrides, with other entertainment provided. Cutter meets Connie Shaklin, a boy a little older than himself, half Chinese and half Russian but a British subject, and who even then has a deep interest in religion, taking days off to visit houses of worship. When the air circus folds, the two drift apart.
Cutter apprentices in aviation engineering, and also learns to fly. He marries a co-worker named Beryl, and soon afterwards is posted overseas as a civilian to do military-related aviation work during World War II. While overseas, he learns his wife has been unfaithful. He is stern, but forgiving, in letters to her, but when she learns that he is soon to return, she commits suicide. Cutter blames himself. He cannot stand to return to his old job or remain in England, so he buys and rebuilds a small aircraft and flies it to Bahrain, then a British protectorate, to start a freight business.
His service fills a need in the Persian Gulf, and he gradually expands, acquiring more aircraft but never incorporating his business. He keeps his business costs down by hiring no European staff, only what he calls Asiatics. Hired to take a load to Indonesia, he is surprised to find Shaklin there, working for a gunrunner who has been arrested by the Dutch, then in control of much of the country. Shaklin has maintained his interest in spirituality, but is also a very experienced engineer. Cutter is able to hire him and to purchase the gunrunner's plane. Both prove major assets to his business. As Cutter retrieves the plane from a small village in Cambodia, he notes that Shaklin has become a religious leader of sorts there.
Shaklin proves a major influence both on Cutter's staff, impressing on them the need for good and honest work, and on the local Arab community in Bahrain. Putting his teachings in terms of Islam and the Koran, he soon gains influence over the local sheikh, who offers Cutter a substantial interest-free loan for a large aircraft he needs. He accepts, and when he returns from Britain with the aircraft, finds that the authorities are very much upset about the transaction, decrying Shaklin's influence over the sheikh. Cutter does his best to soothe matters, but the British order Shaklin out of the area.
In the interim, Connie's sister, Nadezna, has arrived from California to become Cutter's secretary. She and Cutter rapidly find themselves attracted to each other.
Since one of Cutter's customers needs repeated trips to Australia, and since his Asian staff are not welcome in White Australia, Cutter sets up a forward base in the idyllic island of Bali, and assigns Shaklin to head the operations there, more as a sinecure than anything. One of the local girls is soon in unrequited love with him, while Shaklin busies himself learning about the local religion.
Back in the Persian Gulf, Shaklin's expulsion has indirectly occasioned a more reasonable attitude on the part of the British. The Arabs now hold Shaklin in almost divine regard. The Sheikh's health has started failing, and he expresses a desire to see Shaklin before he dies. He and his entourage travel to Bali to visit Shaklin. This pilgrimage both inspires others to similar travel — and stirs up the Dutch colonial administrators, who expel Shaklin from Indonesia. The Sheikh's doctor has expressed concerns about Shaklin's health, and he is soon diagnosed with leukemia — at that time a death sentence.
Shaklin expresses the desire to travel about and meet with the aircraft technicians he has influenced, for by this time his fame has spread throughout Asia. He does so until he becomes too weak to continue, and then he is taken back to the Cambodian village where his teaching started, and where he dies. Given his following, and the fact that so many believe Shaklin divine, Nadezna feels it would be letting them down to marry and live an ordinary life. She goes back to the convent where she went to school, and works with the children, although she is not a Catholic. Cutter resolves to run his air service as a credit to Connie. Cutter is set by Fahad (the Sheik's son) the task of being one of six people who will write a set of Gospels about Shaklin's life — Cutter's volume of these new Scriptures is the book that has just been read. He still believes Shaklin merely human, but is willing to consider the possibility of him being divine.
Nevil Shute Norway was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was "not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.
On the Beach is an apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war some years previous. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is the final novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Florence, Italy, and in 1929, in Paris, France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
A Town Like Alice is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community—to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs.
No Highway is a 1948 novel by Nevil Shute. It formed the basis of the 1951 film No Highway in the Sky.
Sir Alan John Cobham, KBE, AFC was an English aviation pioneer.
No Highway in the Sky is a 1951 black-and-white aviation drama film directed by Henry Koster from a screenplay by R. C. Sherriff, Oscar Millard, and Alec Coppel, based on the 1948 novel No Highway by Nevil Shute. The film stars James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns, Jack Hawkins, Janette Scott, Elizabeth Allan, Ronald Squire, and Jill Clifford.
In the Wet is a novel by Nevil Shute that was first published in the United Kingdom in 1953. It contains many of the typical elements of a hearty and adventurous Shute yarn such as flying, the future, mystic states, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
The Sea is a 2005 novel by John Banville. His fourteenth novel, it won the 2005 Booker Prize.
Paradise is a 1998 novel by Toni Morrison, and her first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Paradise completes a "trilogy" that begins with Beloved (1987) and includes Jazz (1992).
A ḥāl is a special-purpose, temporary state of consciousness, generally understood to be the product of a Sufi's spiritual practices while on his way toward God.
Thieves' Picnic is a mystery novel by Leslie Charteris featuring his Robin Hood-inspired crime fighter, Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1937 by Hodder and Stoughton, and in the United States by The Crime Club the same year. Later editions of the book were retitled The Saint Bids Diamonds; another alternate title is The Saint at the Thieves' Picnic.
What Dreams May Come is a 1978 novel by Richard Matheson. The plot centers on Chris, a man who dies then goes to Heaven, but descends into Hell to rescue his wife. It was adapted in 1998 into the Academy Award-winning film What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Annabella Sciorra.
So Disdained is the second published novel by British author, Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1928 by Cassell & Co., reissued in 1951 by William Heinemann, and issued in paperback by Pan Books in 1966. In the United States it was first published in 1928 by Houghton Mifflin in Boston, with the title The Mysterious Aviator.
Requiem For A Wren is a novel by Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1955 by William Heinemann Ltd. It was published in the United States under the title The Breaking Wave.
Lonely Road is a 1936 British crime drama film directed by James Flood and starring Clive Brook, Victoria Hopper, Nora Swinburne, and Malcolm Keen. It was shot at Ealing Studios in London. The film was released in the United States as Scotland Yard Commands.
Waterfront is a 1950 British black and white drama film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Robert Newton, Kathleen Harrison and Avis Scott. It was written by John Brophy and Paul Soskin based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Brophy.
Stephen Morris and Pilotage are two short novels by Nevil Shute; the first novels he wrote after writing poetry and short stories. Stephen Morris was finished in 1923 while Shute was working at Stag Lane for de Havilland, and Pilotage was written in 1924. Unpublished during his lifetime, but published by his estate in one volume as many of the characters are common to both novels. They are set in the budding post-war aviation industry in Britain, and also on yachts (Pilotage).
Week-End Marriage is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Thornton Freeland and starring Loretta Young. It was produced by First National Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. It is based on the 1932 novel, Week-End Marriage, by Faith Baldwin. The film is preserved at the Library of Congress.
Zaabalawi is a symbolic story written by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988. It was first published in 1961 and reprinted within the collection of God's World. in 1972. Issues affecting restrictions and customs and sometimes rebellion against controls, which causes writers and philosophers in general many troubles. Some of Mahfouz's writing were influenced by philosophical literature which allowed him to raise some questions about the social and traditional restrictions and sometimes it rebel on the regulations, and that causes many troubles to the authors and to the philosophers generally. Mahfouz was speaking about his late schooling and he said, speaking of his late schooling.. "The relationship between me and Sheikh Ajaj was very friendly. He was a fan of my writing style, He also considered my construction topics as role models for students." In this period, my view of religion was characterized by some emancipation, but I emphasize that it was a liberal view and not an infidel. For example, I was writing a topic about the great people of history and I put Muhammad among them. Sheikh Ajaj considered this offensive to the prophet." Zaabalawi contains a Sufi theme, Mahfouz mentions that he is interested in the Sufi ideas by saying: "When I set to myself a program of self-education at the beginning of my life, a large part of this program was about studying major religions and the history of civilization, and I was interested in the Sufi and Islamic writings. Although I do not believe in the ideas and beliefs of Sufism as the Sufis believe, I found in reading their books and contemplated great mental and psychological comfort. In Sufism I was attracted by the idea of spiritual supremacy.”