Review of MARAZAN by Nevil Shute published 1926
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, Nevil Shute’s debut novel. I’d read it as a teenager and was not so taken with it then. It’s better than I thought. Exciting, with drug smuggling, a daring-do pilot and ‘flossies’ (floozies in today’’s lingo I think); melodramatic (with a Moriati-type, evil foreign, fascist gentleman) and cinematic, in keeping with its day, but not politically correct in today’s ‘brave new world’. It is a pager-turner, especially at the climax. One pauses and smiles to think that in the present day, when we can track just about anything or anyone without all the observing they had to do on the ground for interception of the bad guys.
It is interesting to visualize Nevil Shute Norway in 1924 at age 25 working away on calculations for the great Airship R100 as the No 2 man under the great engineer, Barnes Wallis. At that time Shute was based at Crayford, Kent. In 1926, the whole team moved into their restored air station at Howden, Yorkshire. Barnes Wallis lived in Catford, London and worked in Westminster up until that time.
Nevil Shute was a well-educated, logical man of science and it shows in the way he lived his life and the way he operated. He was a man who ‘thought outside the box’. As he toiled by day on the great dirigible, he sat and wrote novels by night as recreation. One can see him sitting over an old Underwood puffing his pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sabrani.
The descriptions of sailing around the Scillies off southwest England in the English Channel and the flying back in the early twenties are excellent. I guess there is no such place as Marazan Sound, at least I could not find it. Shute’s works are cinematic and paced well for adaption into film.
He talks about fascists. In those days he could not have known that they would turn out to be the bad guys as were the communists in Russia and China. He wasn’t to know they were just another bunch of Socialists a different branding. He shows his old friend as one of the good fascists!
An interesting read for Shutists. He certainly inspired me over the course of my life. Four stars may be a bit high but I am biased.
It is interesting to visualize Nevil Shute Norway in 1924 at age 25 working away on calculations for the great Airship R100 as the No 2 man under the great engineer, Barnes Wallis. At that time Shute was based at Crayford, Kent. In 1926, the whole team moved into their restored air station at Howden, Yorkshire. Barnes Wallis lived in Catford, London and worked in Westminster up until that time.
Nevil Shute was a well-educated, logical man of science and it shows in the way he lived his life and the way he operated. He was a man who ‘thought outside the box’. As he toiled by day on the great dirigible, he sat and wrote novels by night as recreation. One can see him sitting over an old Underwood puffing his pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sabrani.
The descriptions of sailing around the Scillies off southwest England in the English Channel and the flying back in the early twenties are excellent. I guess there is no such place as Marazan Sound, at least I could not find it. Shute’s works are cinematic and paced well for adaption into film.
He talks about fascists. In those days he could not have known that they would turn out to be the bad guys as were the communists in Russia and China. He wasn’t to know they were just another bunch of Socialists a different branding. He shows his old friend as one of the good fascists!
An interesting read for Shutists. He certainly inspired me over the course of my life. Four stars may be a bit high but I am biased.
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