What Happened to the Corbetts
By (Author) Nevil Shute
Vintage Publishing
Vintage Classics
15th October 2009
3rd September 2009
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Adventure / action fiction
Classic fiction: general and literary
823.912
Paperback
256
Width 129mm, Height 197mm, Spine 16mm
185g
A classic adventure from the author of A Town Like Alice and On the Beach. Nevil Shute wrote this prophetic novel just before the start of the Second World War. In it he describes the devastation that results from an aerial bomb attack on Southampton that destroys the city's infrastructure and leaves the inhabitants at the mercy of cholera and further assaults. The story follows the trials and tribulations of the Corbett family as they try to get to safety.
Mr Shute is a storyteller in the tradition of R.L. Stevenson and Kipling * Evening News *
One of the best storytellers of our age -- J.B.Priestley
That shattering, unaffected, literary style of his is wholly deceptive...is, in fact, masterly -- H.E. Bates
Nevil Shute 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).